Lav's Music Corner

Editors Note: Hello angels, Lavender here. I'm about to tell you the full story of this Nav review. I've been hard at work on this review of the new Jane Remover album Revengeseekerz   for Ringtone Magazine , something that took quite a bit of time and attention away from this blog, but was worth it because I'm REALLY happy with the final piece. In the meantime, I started to speak to some friends about contributing guest reviews for projects I didn't get the chance to cover while I was busy. Surprisingly, the first to come through was from a 100% unserious joke request for one of my girlfriends to review the new Nav record. Transparently, I find the record exhaustingly boring and hadn't considered covering it myself at all. To my surprise, she leaped at the opportunity to suffer through its 36-minute runtime and collect her thoughts into a review. It's my honor to present to you the debut album review from my girlfriend Megan, in its entirety, below.  Review by ...

Review by Lav: WE DON'T TRUST YOU  is a victory lap a decade in the making. It's hard to think of a rapper and producer who have inspired the contemporary trap style that's dominated hip-hop for years more than Future and Metro Boomin. Both while working together and separately. the pair have defined a generation of artists and are among the most influential to the next. That's why it's surprising to say that I can't even say I'm a particularly huge fan of either artist. I certainly have plenty of moments I enjoy from both of them, but they're not the kind of superstars I could ever expect myself to LOVE. After a year-long series of teases towards this record, I was mostly expecting a lot of frosting with not much cake underneath. That's why I'm so happy to report that across the hour of material here, both Future and Metro are about as close to their A-game as I've ever heard.  The record comes out swinging right out of the gate with one ban...

Review by Lav:  I was pretty damn excited for this album. From his breakthrough around 2015 leading up to his sophomore album i am > i was , 21 Savage underwent one of the greatest and quickest artistic improvements I've ever witnessed in hip hop. That left me pretty excited for what he's gonna do next. While his output in the years since certainly hasn't been bad, he hasn't continued progressing artistically in the way I had hoped. I was really excited to see him cross paths with Metro Boomin for a second time on 2020's Savage Mode II  but the album didn't really live up to the hype I had for it. On the other hand, I was pretty surprised by just how good his collab album with Drake Her Loss  was in 2022.  That led us to american dream , the long-awaited third solo studio album from Savage. The album dropped with no singles and was only announced just a few days before its release. Without much to set expectations for the record in advance, I'll start the...

King's Disease III  - Nas Unlike the bar on the opening track where Nas says he "doesn't drop often", this is the third album in the KD series in as many years. The combination of Nas and Hit-Boy has been pumping out songs recently and while I thought the first King's Disease  was just okay, the second one really did impress me . So if Nas took another step forward on the third edition it has the potential to be one of his best albums since Illmatic . At the very least Nas pulls off the level of lyrical proficiency you'd expect, as does Hit-Boy with the beats. Even when this record isn't operating at its best it does at least sound good. One of the primary issues I have with the album gets back to the recent over-exposure of Nas as this record sounds extremely familiar. From the beats to the hooks to the subject matter Nas is rapping about there's just a lot here that feels closer to routine. Thankfully, I still find the music here pretty exciting, and...

21 Savage & Metro Boomin   are a pairing of some of contemporary hip hops most prominent voices and producers in the current game. The two originally connected on a full length project in 2016 when 21 Savage was an up and coming voice in the Atlanta hip hop scene and Metro Boomin was one of the most in demand producers after working with Kanye West and Drake. Since then they have both grown even further in notoriety and achieved commercial and critical success with projects of their own. For many trap fans Savage Mode II  was one of the most anticipated rap records of the year.  Review By Lavender: Balancing the tone of this review is going to be a little bit difficult. Because of how much I've enjoyed 21 Savage's music in recent years Savage Mode II  was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. While ultimately the album lives up the veteran caliber of its primary artists, that is all it does. The lack of many true standout moments here as well as some p...

Solange is an American singer and actress, and sister of pop icon Beyonce. She found herself in backup dancing and acting roles for much of the 2000's but had a critical and commercial breakthrough on the back of her spectacular 2016 album A Seat At The Table . One of its singles Cranes In The Sky  also became a huge success and ultimately took home a best R&B performance Grammy. So after two and a half years of mostly silence on the musical front Solange recorded When I Get Home  in secret and dropped two teasers for it throughout the final week of February of this year before announcing on February 28th that the album was to be released that night.  Review By Lav: I was like most people, never really a huge fan of Solange until 2016, when she dropped her fantastic 3rd studio album A Seat At The Table . Not only did it show she was capable of making a fantastic album it proved that she had huge single potential with the brilliant Cranes In The Sky  and ...

Offset is an Atlanta rapper and one third of superstar trap trio Migos. The group blew up over the course of a few viral singles in the mid 2010's and have exploded into one of the most popular acts in the world, and as each member has ventured off into various collaborations and solo projects Offset is the last in line to release a solo album after poorly received projects from Quavo and then Takeoff preceded Father of 4. With only one promotional singles very close to the albums release it is hard to get a read on what exactly to expect from Offset this time around. Review By Lavender: When Migos dropped Culture in early 2017 it felt like the most important album in the entire world. After Childish Gambino shouted out the groups hit Bad & Boujee and it blew up to one of the biggest hits of the year they used the album as a platform to launch a full scale takeover of the music industry. 2017 also included a flurry of features for the trio and more imitators than anybody...

Future, is the widely successful and hugely influential pseudonym of Nayvadius Wilburn, an Atlanta trap rapper who has played a huge role in defining movements of popular rap culture in the second half of this decade. His early projects Pluto and Honest  put him on the map and resulted in his underwhelming selection as a XXL freshman in 2012. But on the back of some hugely successful singles Future had a 2015 for the ages. His 56 Nights  mixtape, the collaborative mixtape with Zaytoven Beast Mode , his biggest and most acclaimed commercial album DS2  and a hugely popular collaborative album with Drake What A Time To Be Alive  all combined for one of the most dominant years in recent memory by a popular artist. Since then it has been harder and harder to consider Future groundbreaking or as influential an artist as he once was. 2017 saw Future struggling with the very average HNDRXX  and and bloated and lacking FUTURE and even his more quiet 2018 didn't do won...

James Blake, has been up to this point one of the best, most creative and most consistent artists of this decade. Since coming up as a dubstep infused experimentalist in the early 2010's with EPs like Klaiverwerke and Enough Thunder, James Blake gained popularity and set the stage for his spectacular debut self-titled album James Blake. The album was met with critical acclaim and was one of only 3 10/10 scores that Music Corner gave out that year, as well as awarding it our album of the year nod. Since his experimental bedroom electronica masterpiece Blake has dropped two fantastic album sin its wake. 2013's Overgrown was a much less jagged and experimental album that relied on gorgeous layers of backing instrumentation and spacious atmospheres to succeed. James Blake vocally took more of a center stage than ever before on his third album The Colour In Anything  which was surprised dropped in 2016. Softer and more distant instrumentals and huge sparse compositions meant that...