Before I talk about the beautiful album Limbo released by Amine a little over a month ago, I would like to discuss some more recent music that has been released in the past couple of weeks. 6ix9ine released an album *yawn*. I hope no one wasted their time on that absolute loser because I certainly did not, and please do not suggest it to me. Lil Durk, commonly known as that guy with a few words in “Laugh Now Cry Later” by Drake, dropped an awesome single called “The Voice”. He showed a little versatility with a really great autocruning chorus, too. It gave some 808s and Heartbreaks vibes which I found pretty cool. I believe that was all that caught my eye besides Detroit 2 which I will discuss next, but as always, please send suggestions to my email at halperi_davi@bentley.edu and let me know what I missed out on.
If I am being quite honest, I have never been a very big (no pun intended) Big Sean fan. I am aware of his prominence in the industry as he has worked with practically every major mainstream rapper including the likes of Kanye West, Travis Scott, Migos, Young Thug, Eminem and so many more. I felt his previous album, I Decided, was fairly good when it initially came out, but did not have much replay value. I rarely return to any of the songs from that project. However, I was still excited for Detroit 2 because I Decided was his most recent album before this and it was released in 2017. Overall, there were certainly some good songs on this album. It starts pretty strong with “Why Would I Stop?” and “Lucky Me”. “Why Would I Stop?” is a nice little floss track where Big Sean repeats the idea that he is an unstoppable force. “Lucky Me” has a Travis Scott-esque beat switch which certainly caught me off guard and added a lot of diversity to the song. Although, the beat switch did not quite compare to that of the lengthy and super entertaining “Friday Night Cypher” and its beat switches. The feature list on this cut goes on forever as it is almost 10 minutes long. It is like 10+ different snippets of songs all mashed into one (as the title suggests) cypher. Two features that were incredible on this album came from Travis Scott and Post Malone. Not only was Travis exceptional on “Lithuania”, but he also spiced up the song “ZTFO” by adding his ad libs throughout the track. Post Malone came through and made the song “Wolves” feel like one of his own with that very catchy chorus. This album also had some intriguing skits from Dave Chapelle, Stevie Wonder and Erykah Badu where they all displayed stories regarding Big Sean’s home city, Detroit. Big Sean was able to show love for his city while making some really good songs in the process, I am excited to give this a few more listens.
Top Songs: “Wolves”, “Lithuania”, and “Guard Your Heart”
To put it simply, Limbo by Amine was one of my favorite albums in recent memory. This album gave me an entire new perspective on the man who many others, including myself, referred to as the guy who made “Caroline”. Obviously I thought “Caroline” showed that he had some potential to make great music, but after hearing Good For You and ONEPOINTFIVE I completely wrote this man off as a one hit wonder. I believe it started with the first single I heard from the album called “Shimmy” where he sampled the classic ODB song, “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”. I mean he just spits bar after bar in this song and starts off strong by claiming that this is his year and he’s ready to intervene in the rap game again. I liked this song when it came out, but had no idea what it would lead to. The first song on the album is called “Burden”, where one of Amine’s friends prefaces the song as something that you “go pick up your homie from jail to”. He raps about the struggles of a black man growing up which transitions nicely into the next track where he shouts out his home neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. The song is called “Woodlawn” and it is a quick 2 minute song with one of my favorite choruses that I have heard in a while. It is an awesome flex song where Amine basks in his own glory. I will limit myself to talking about two more songs as I could easily give elaborate descriptions about almost every song on the tracklist. “Compensating” is a quintessential radio hit and one of the best songs on this album. The beat is so clean and Amine sings beautifully over it. To complete the track he featured the king Young Thug for quite the animated feature verse. You can tell he had a lot of fun working on this song with Amine and was an incredible addition. Now, my favorite song on this album is “Riri”. I do not know why I am so attached to this song, but there are so many things I love about it. From the background singing, to the ridiculous drum pattern added halfway through the song and most importantly the reference to being stuck in limbo with some girl (which he fits in almost every song, try to find them all), this song is a masterpiece. I may have to return to his older albums after this, I will keep you all updated.
Top Songs: “Pressure In My Palms”, “Riri” and “Woodlawn”
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