Pop Smoke
was a New York drill rapper who was tragically murdered last year, and has since proven to be a force of commercial music. Faith is Pop Smoke's 2nd posthumous album and likely to be his 2nd #1 album, following last years Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon. Just a few days before the record the tracklist and production credits for the album were revealed, showing off a myriad of talented features.
Review By Lav:
It's always difficult to review a posthumous record, since it can often have so little creative input from the artist whose name it's released under. In the recent years, hip hop in particular has frequently been criticized for it's posthumous records which either release recordings that are clearly unfinished and shouldn't be heard by the masses, or packing the songs full of trendy features that the original artist would have never worked with. This record does both, but it isn't quite as bad as it seems like at the outset. The biggest problem with the record is its massive 20 track length, which features a number of bad collaborations and performances that were clearly not ready to be released. So many of the artists and producers that had a hand in this record clearly have a respect for Pop Smoke and his potential in the hip hop realm. Unfortunately for as much good work as they all did on this record, the fact of the matter is that the Pop Smoke well isn't running very deep at this point and a lot of the recordings we have left from him are a far cry from his best work during his life.
Thankfully the album isn't a total loss, and most of these tracks are simply forgettable rather than really bad. There are also a few major highlights to be found starting pretty soon off in the tracklist. Tell The Vision features Kanye basically working as a hype man for the track but also having a hand in the production. The result is a deep rumbling trap instrumental that pairs really well with Pop Smoke's vocal intensity. Pusha T also shows up on the back end of the song and delivers an absolutely killer verse to wrap up the song. Manslaughter doesn't necessarily sound like it's name. Instead it aims for a glamorous almost bling like rap song with Rick Ross and The-Dream. The luxury of the whole thing is apparent and the lyrical flexing that goes on feels quite appropriate. The only other song I really liked was Coupe. It's a short, simple and catchy trap banger that I'm pretty into and I think could have fit well on some of Pop Smoke's earlier mixtapes.
The bulk of the record isn't quite bad, it just features one forgettable beat after another mixed in with a wide variance in quality of performances from Pop Smoke and the features. More Time is a decent track that Pop Smoke has to carry all on his own and it sort of works. Brush Em is a proper banger but the beat can get a bit annoying and it features some of the records worst bars. Woo Baby and Demeanor are both genre switch-ups that Pop Smoke sound a little bit weird over but the songs themselves are certainly solid, the former being an R&B cut with Chris Brown and the latter being an electro pop song with Dua Lipa.
What's Crackin is another painfully average cut with a half decent Takeoff feature but the beat and hook are so forgettable it's almost a waste. One of the biggest problems with the record is inconsistent features, occasionally Pop Smoke himself and even another feature deliver good performances, but someone comes along and falls far FAR short. Bout A Million has a solid Pop Smoke performance and very good 21 Savage feature, but getting through 42 Dugg's performance can be really really difficult. The worst feature on the whole record is on Back Door, a half decent track with a glittery beat and quite melodic Quavo feature. Kodak Black on the other hand delivers a performance that is absolutely difficult to stomach.
What's also unfortunate is that this record features some of the worst songs I've ever heard Pop Smoke involved in, and their release feels borderline disrespectful to his legacy. Top Shotta is a total mess that Pop Smoke sounds terribly out of place on, and speaking of out of place why the hell is Pusha T on this track he really does his best but it seems like he never had a chance. 30 is a bad track but it barely even features anything from Pop Smoke, he sounds like a feature on his own song. Genius and Mr. Jones are really hard tracks to sit through one after another where both Swae Lee and Future fil to connect sonically with the tracks. Spoiled is a track with Pharrell that did have some potential but once again Pop Smoke just doesn't belong here and the whole thing falls apart. The worst song on the whole record is 8-Ball a kooky, spacey acoustic cut with a terrible Kid Cudi feature and absolutely awkward arrangement of all these sounds together.
I wouldn't call Faith a disrespectful release, but it occasionally walks a very thin line. For every great song here there is at least one that is difficult to stomach, particularly if you were a fan of Pop Smoke's music released while he was still alive. The scope of the record is obviously huge, but as an artist he had always thrived in his NY drill music niche. Most of the experiments here vary from tolerable to completely terrible and the record makes it painfully clear that everything good Pop Smoke left behind before his death has already been used. Another posthumous album would likely be an even worse exploitation of his death. While this isn't the worst or most disrespectful album I've ever heard, it hardly has the legs that so many of us hoped for from a proper Pop Smoke release, which we have to now unfortunately accept that we will probably never get. 4/10
This cover is ten times better than the last Pop Smoke one. Being released posthumously it has a lot that it needed to fulfill, being respectful, paying homage and being instantly recognizable. It ticks all these boxes. The texture the photo has, the contrast and composition are all working well and I enjoy how it's not completely stark black but instead chooses a grey. This makes it feel timeless. It's not my style but overall I think this does a great job within the context of the album. 8.5/10
For more hip hop check out my review of Migos Culture 3 here