![]() “Halftime” walks a captivating tightrope of burbling keyboard and music box, and that’s the most aggressive-sounding thing here.īut for all the aqueous vibes, Barter 6 doesn’t push Thugger forward much as a melodist - too much of the melody is playing the corners and his bizarre combination of slow-rolling and speedy triplet rapping doesn’t wrap itself around anything nearly as obvious as last year’s revelatory “Lifestyle” or “Danny Glover,” much less his excellent weirdo-has-arrived anthem “Picacho.” It’s just too limited, and he even sounds kind of bored with it. The synths and echoing rattles on “Dome” suggest some kind of scuba expedition in a rusty shark cage. The fragile piano line beneath the single “Check” deserves to be more audible. It’s his mellowest record, and gorgeously so: Opener “Constantly Hating” and the amazing “Knocked Off” follow iLoveMakonnen’s breezy Drink More Water 5 as some of the prettiest hip-hop in years, particularly the latter, with its waterlogged riff and submerged percussion. It’s the first Young Thug release that plays like it was conceived as a carefully pieced album rather than a purged collection of tracks. Where does that leave the music on Barter 6, which has ostensibly been dismissed as a stopgap almost the second it was made public? It doesn’t sound like a mixtape, on one hand. So what was once an album called Carter 6 is now a mixtape called Barter 6 (as in “Bicken Back Being Bool”), with a “real” album - Hy!£UN35, his publicist says it’s pronounced Hi Tunes - due at the end of August. But the fun was ruined by a litigious Lil Wayne, who’s done little to assure us that his long-delayed Tha Carter V will see the light of day either (unless you believe Weezy: “ Carter V coming soon ain’t no motherfuckin’ such thing as Carter 6,” - we’ll wait for the lawyers’ opinion). On the other end of the spectrum, we have the once-mighty Carter 6, which was to be the unpinnable Young Thug‘s first true album after a landfill of mixtapes that got better and better, peaking with last year’s nothing-like-it Black Portland, a stoned bull session between Thugger and the incarcerated Bloody Jay. There’s no reason to believe we won’t still see Views From the 6 later this year, but any parentheses around If You’re Reading This‘ status as a true full-length in Drake’s canon have certainly disappeared. 1 and now we’re seeing a physical release. When Drake dropped If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, he kept the little Views From the 6 emblem on the cover as a hint that the proper LP might still be coming, while people tried to figure out if it was a “mixtape” or an “album.” Then If You’re Reading This went to No. ![]() Whereas mixtapes graduated from being dry runs to promising albums, they quickly became the main event itself, and now a certain strain of them occupies arguably the wimpiest role of all: the toe-dipper. ![]() ![]() This trend means that once former SPIN Rappers of the Year like Danny Brown ( XXX) and Chance the Rapper ( Acid Rap) - as well as somebody named Kendrick Lamar ( Section.80) - introduced their massive talents to the world on, ahem, “download-only albums” via lush, expensive productions (sometimes even including live musicians), rather than scratchy pirated beats. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |