Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$ pretty much defines the underground hip hop scene. He blew up last year with a mixtape that I thought was absolutely stellar: 1999. The project was defined by 1990s sounding beats and Joey rapping with some perfect old school flow, and great delivery and lyricism. Joey has a gotten a little more popular since then, releasing a very good mixtape with his Pro Era crew, and even appearing on ASAP Rocky's latest album. Will Joey keep up the good work with this new mixtape in 2013? This will be another review that is not track-by-track.
Let's get this out of the way: Joey Bada$$ can still SPIT. He brings some awesome lyrics, complete with great punchlines and some vivid Brooklyn street imagery. This is all evident right from the word go with the first track, Alowha. Joey is firing on all cylinders here, spitting like a pro with awesome lines everywhere, sounding tough and aggressive as well. This song definitely got me hyped up for this mixtape. Unfortunately, the next two tracks don't even come close in terms of intensity. While Joey is still spitting some dope lyrics and flowing effortlessly, he doesn't seem to be doing it with any passion or interest. Sure, Hilary Swank and My Youth have some really cool instrumental, with the former bringing some cool horns and the latter having a reggae sound to it, Joey just puts me to sleep on them with his bars. A much needed change came with the song Death of YOLO. Joey sounded a little better here and Smoke DZA stops by to drop a solid verse, as he always does. This song is not amazing by any means, but it was a nice step up from the past few.
I am sad to say Joey's boring rapping style continues on more tracks here. Sweet Dreams, Word Is Bond, Trap Door, and Reign are all plagued by some monotonous rapping from Joey, and I wasn't blown away by any of these instrumentals. These tracks all seriously felt like filler to me. One of the only solo tracks I seriously loved was 95 Till Infinity. Pretty much everything about was track was dope to me. The beat was laid back and spacious, leading to me to think this was another boring track, but Joey comes out with an over-the-top, really aggressive delivery. He sounded awesome on this song and I really wished he did this more on Summer Knights. I also somewhat enjoyed Right On Time because it had an actual topic and Joey sounded a little bit more interested. The last good solo track was definitely LongLiveSteelo. This sentimental track hit hard and you could definitely feel the emotion in Joey's voice as he reminisced moments with a fallen friend.
The songs with features on this album were pretty good for the most part. Satellite was an awesome track. The beat was super catchy and sounded very interesting. All the rappers killed it here, but Dessy Hinds at the end had the best verse on the song, spitting really impressively here and rhyming with some real skill. Dessy Hinds also kills it on Sit N Prey, a track I enjoyed, but not nearly as much as Satellite. Amethyst Rockstar was another memorable track as Joey and Kirk Knight spit over an awesome MF DOOM beat. I think Kirk totally killed Joey on this track, though. He sounded great and had some really nice wordplay in his verse. Some other feature songs didn't impress me as much, though. 47 Goonz featured some of my least favorite Pro Era members spitting some boring verses, and Sorry Bonita fell way short of the posse cut on the 1999 mixtape, as this one was just not interesting at all to me.
SUMMER KNIGHTS WRAP UP
+Joey can really rap and brings a lot lyrically
+Some cool, darker, more mellow production
+Dessy Hinds and Kirk Knight helped a lot with dope guest verses
+Joey brought awesome aggressiveness on 95 Till Infinity
-Joey sounded really uninterested and monotonous on a lot of tracks
-too many songs
-just not even close to 1999
Best: Alowha, 95 Till Infinity, Satellite
Worst: Sweet Dreams
Joey Bada$$- Summer Knights
7.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment