Life Is Beautiful - Powers Pleasant: Review
is a New York hip hop producer and DJ and one of the founding members of New York's own Pro Era. He has been producing music for years for various members of Pro Era including Joey Badass and Kirk Knight as well as fellow New York artists like The Underachievers. After dropping some beat tapes on his SoundCloud over the years but geared up for a new album with three singles featuring high profile hip hop artists.
Review By Lavender:
I have been an admirer of Powers Pleasant for a long time, particularly alongside Joey Bada$$ over the years. While I respect him a lot as a beat crafter my perception of him as a curator of talent was in dire straights after hearing the first thee singles from this record and my expectations of the album turned out dead on. There are plenty of great beats and verses across this record, but they are bogged down with rappers missing the mark on almost every song.
The lead single is one of the best songs on the album and the only one without at least one underwhelming performance. Pull Up has a killer hard-hitting trap beat that's dark and brooding with Joey Bada$$ perfectly matching the style of the performance. Even A$AP Ferg surprisingly nails his animated verse on the song too for a pretty solid track throughout. The final bonus track of sorts is a Beast Coast remix of this song that features some decent verses from various members of the collective and is a pretty solid outing in its own right, although I do enjoy the original version better.
The singles only got worse from there with Please Forgive a song that starts with an absolutely killer Denzel Curry verse and ends with a great Zombie Juice performance but it's what's in between that is the issue. IDK comes off as a more boring version of Zel's opening verse and Zillakami raps a decent verse but gets caught up in his strange vocal semantics that made his last record a nearly unbearable listen. With a solid beat this song is still pretty worthwhile and its best moments coming at the beginning and end help it not be too much of a burden to the tracklist. Can't Fucc Wit It has some massive wasted potential as the beat is seriously fantastic with some crazy slide synths that sound like futuristic pan flutes. Unfortunately G Perico and Buddy are the rappers chosen to take on this song and they both completely botch it making a seriously painful listen out of a song with a great beat.
The rest of the tracks on this short record suffer from many of the same issues. Vintage Chanel recruits Joey, Meechy, Kirk and Zombie to jump on a hard hitting beat with some awesome bumping percussion. Kirk's hook is far from the sharpest I've heard from him and I enjoy the Zombies more on this record than the Pro Era guys which is typically the other way around. Hit My Line has a decent beat and opens up with a good Joey verse but I don't really like AK's hook or Jay Critch's verse either making the song more bad than good and one I don't want to return to. Purified has a great beat with some Pi'erre Bourne style keys that sound really cool and once again the song opens up with a great verse from Joey Bada$$ that reminds me of something smooth from ALL AMERIKKKAN BADA$$. Aaron Rose surprised me too with a surprisingly meditative and well thought-out verse that wraps up one of the best tracks on the record.
Life Is Beautiful is a pretty sharp display of Powers Pleasant's talents, which really didn't need to be proven at this point. Unfortunately as a full length album experience the record is consistently taxing one track after another as songs with potential disappoint with underwhelming verses from their featured artists that show a clear lack of quality control that so many producer albums tend to suffer from. 4.5/10
