Today I am reviewing the debut album from Sir Michael Rocks, Banco. Mikey Rocks is a member of hip-hop duo The Cool Kids with producer/MC Chuck Inglish. Up until this point, Sir Michael Rocks has just been doing music with Chuck as a group, so I am interested in what he brings to the table as a solo artist. While I like The Cool Kids, and I also like what this guy does with his guest verses, I am a little skeptical of how a solo album by him would sound. Will Mikey Rocks surprise me and come through with a good album on Banco?
The production on this album was....something. It was different for sure. Banco may be the weirdest, most unusual collection of songs I've heard this year. Being "out there", though, does not always mean good. None of these beats really blew me away or had me really loving the production. For the most part, I was just listening to this album confused. There were a couple instrumentals that I thought were decent at best. The song Lost Boys had a relaxed, but spooky vibe to it with its eerie strings. It also developed nicely, adding in some guitars. The song Ain't Nothing Like featured DJ Mustard on the production, and he delivered a good, not great beat. It was classic Mustard sound, and the beat was a definite head-bopper. Besides those two, these instrumentals were just weird and forgettable. Songs like Memo, Bussin, Drug Dealer, and Killswitch really tried to have great beats, but to me they just ended up sounding unappealing. Others on this album, like Playstation 1.5 and Fuck Seaworld, just featured beats that were somehow unusual and boring at the same time. These did not catch my ear at all. This album as a whole just stood out in an awkward way. Aside from two good ones, I wasn't impressed with Banco's rather abstract production.
The way I feel about the production is very similar to how i felt about Sir Michael Rocks' rapping performance on this album. I never really understood what this guy was trying to do on this project. While I have liked this guy's rapping performance on features, as well as Cool Kids albums, he completely disappointed me on Banco. First of all, I feel like Mikey Rocks just tried way too hard to be a more versatile rapper on this album. He was over all kinds of beats, and trying to do way too many things. This experimental approach does not fit Rocks at all. This album saw him trying auto tune, singing, freakishly weird skits and different kinds of rhyme schemes, all of which sounded forced and awkward for him. I was not feeling this guy's rapping on any of these tracks. I felt his lyrical performance was just uncomfortable. He had weird lines all over this album and he just never sounded very good, in my opinion. The only track on Banco that I felt was great was Lost Boys, a song carried by Trinidad James and Mac Miller before Rocks started rapping at the end. Speaking of features, they were actually pretty decent on this album, and they sounded a lot more like they knew what they were doing than Mikey Rocks. Twista, as usual, put in a good verse on Some Ish. Casey Veggies continued his string of good features on Bussin, and I really liked Robb Banks on Killswitch. These guys could not save this album though, from being a bizarre, uncomfortable listening experience. I think Mikey Rocks is a solid MC, but he did not execute this debut solo album well at all.
BANCO WRAP UP
+Some pretty decent instrumentals
+Good feature verses
-Sir Michael Rocks totally missed the mark
-Rocks' flow sounded forced and not great
-Felt too unusual overall to be good
-Awkward vibes from the album, with weird skits and failed experiments
Best: Some Ish, Bussin, Lost Boys
Worst: One Time
Sir Michael Rocks- Banco
4.8/10
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