zeit/geist

a blog with its fingers on the pulse of the culture

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SLIME LANGUAGE 2

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ROCKSTAR BIKERS & CHAINS!!!

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DARK LANE DEMO TAPES

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Boys Don’t Cry

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Pharrell and Chad Hugo for FADER, 2002

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High Off Life - Future album review

I posted a couple days ago giving my predictions on the album and unfortunately I was NOT wrong. Future has got to realize that quality > quantity. High Off Life is a 21 track project where only 7 songs have features - let that sink in. That’s 14 songs of ONLY Future over the same 808′s. What made 56 nights, purple reign, monster, beast mode, DS2, and EVOL all so great was that they were all relatively shorter projects with smart features. 

I think Future’s still got some fuel in the tank still, don’t get me wrong. He (generally) has a great ear for beats, he’s got fire verses (SPENT A KILO ON A MINK COAT!!!), and can still dish out a solid fucking hook. But man oh man does he need help with album direction these days. There’s potential in this album to be something incredible. Here’s what I’d change:

1. shorten the album down from 21 songs to 10-13 (tracks 5-8 and 11-13  almost put me to sleep good god) 2. either cut down some of the song lengths or switch up the flow (nobody, and i mean absolutely nobody, wants to hear a 5 and a half minute long remix of “life is good”, or a 4 minute long "accepting my flaws” where future just mumbles in autotune over a washed out, bland beat with no flow switch or beat switch)

making the album shorter is really important for a trap rap album because the beats are already more or less generic, especially when its coming from a rapper like future whos been in the game for like 10 years. i’ll take 10 2 and a half minute songs over 21 songs that are all 3 and a half/4 minutes long each. thats a chore to listen to.

switching up the flow is important. It keeps the listener engaged. Beat switches have the same effect as well. the thing that made Eternal Atake so good was that Uzi had almost  20 different flows and a myriad of producers working on the songs.  Versatility and diversity are key. 

just my two cents though. 6/10

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wipe your nose

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Daily reminder that Lil Uzi Vert is incredible

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Summer 2020 anthem soon as this pandemic blows over

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The over/under on the new Future album

Fairly certain the new album is going to be a 5 or 6/10. To be honest, Future’s been on a steady decline since Purple Reign and EVOL. That was like almost 4 years ago. The WIZARD album was average at best (the song servin kills cam was good not going to lie), and what the hell was even Save Me?  As a hardcore day 1 Future fan, it saddens me when I think about how he may have  used up all his juice blessing us with 56 Nights, Monster, Purple Reign, and DS2. I remember back in 2013-2016, every other song in the club was a Future song.  Too bad he didn’t parse out his releases - his discography got saturated so quickly and now as fans some of us could honestly care less for yet another 22 track album. Best songs on the album will be any of the ones with features. I dont trust a solo Future track anymore. We’ll find out Friday I guess :/

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THE SCOTTS

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I miss the old Kanye

10 years ago i heard christian dior denim flow for the first time. I remember it was just like yesterday i was riding shotgun in my buddy’s car, driving around downtown bumping the latest G.O.O.D. friday tunes (this was back in the day when you had to convert the youtube videos to mp3 files). Who could forget cuts like Looking for Trouble, Good Friday, Christmas in Harlem, So Appalled, and Don’t Look Down? And to find out that those tracks were just the throwaways???!!! I must’ve listened to MBDTF from top to bottom at least 150 times in my life. the electric guitar solo on devil in a new dress? a raekwon verse on gorgeous? nicki absolutely killing  everyone with her verse on monster? the 3 minute outro on runaway? as Ye once said on stronger, “they don’t make em like this anymore”. i really do miss the old Kanye, not just because he made better music back then, but also because of what that period in time represented for hip hop. artists really took 2-3 years off between albums to craft a cohesive, high quality body of work. You don’t get that anymore really. Streaming and social media messed all that up. Rappers nowadays are incentivized to create longer albums, subsequently padded with more filler/throwaway tracks, that ultimately garner more streams/money. They also pump out more albums, sometimes 2 to 3 a year (im looking at you A Boogie) that end up just being bad. And you know what, while i’m here... A Boogie you suck. Stop threatening to quit the rap game. your music sounds like acid reflux.