A little too direct, for me
I’m well aware I may come off as a hater writing this.
Although I’ve been a fan of Joey Bada$$ since his first project I’ve always felt there was a dormant Reasonable Doubt, Illmatic, Black on Both Sides or Hell on Earth waiting in the caverns of his mind, looking for the perfect time to be released. With that said I’ll just come right out and say it. This new record won’t be it.
What is an “it” album, really? “It,” to me, is that album you give a friend who doubts an MC’s skill. You know what I’m talking about. The top 50 or so rappers of all time have those records in their back pocket. The “top 50” transcends sales and popularity. It goes as high as Jay to as “low” as Company Flow. The point is that it’s the apex of an MC’s ability to craft images with words thrown at a beat. It’s the power an individual has between listeners and the layers of music, the joy of giving fans the opportunity to go back and listen to a record ten years in the future and catch a new line that once went over heads.
Joey’s on a trajectory to craft that “it” album someday, as he is only 22, but I would be a liar if I said the presentation of this new album, All-AmeriKKKan Bada$$, didn’t set him back some.
In interview after interview Joey described the lyrical content as much more direct, with more focus, so gone are the crazy one-liners and double entendres and wild vocal flows. Joey sacrificed most of that to feed the “stay woke” crowd.
The album begins with “wake up!” “free your mind!” whispered around a piano loop. We’re zombies, lost in America, among friends and foes with their dim-lit phones starved of anything real, new slaves to new chains to new racism based on centuries of such. I get all of that. I respect it completely. I do.
So while songs on this record like “Land of the Free,” “AmeriKKKan Idol,” and “For My People” are great for what they are as overt statements addressed to the nation, there’s a clear lack of nuance in his lyrics, leading to my feelings that the album listens more like an essay with good beats and rhymes instead of a truly memorable statement.
What separates it from a better political rap album, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, an obvious reference Joey made to Ice Cube’s 1990 classic, is that there is less of an artistic compromise with the predecessor. Maybe I shouldn’t make comparisons but I’ll make it quick. With Ice Cube’s version I walked away thinking, “wow, he really went far on that one.” Song after song was filled with blunt force. With Joey, however, I walked away thinking, “damn, he didn’t go far enough.”
Of course there are album highlights. “Ring the Alarm,” for one, is fantastic aggressive Joey with solid feature verses. I also found “Super Predator” to be a great example of taking a stray concept from the past election and flipping it into a great Joey song for the catalog, something you actually want to breakdown, something that isn’t so obvious to understand. Ditto for “Babylon.” You really get a higher sense of vocal passion from the artist here, and by the time you transition into “Legendary” and the final track you’re ready again for the overt politics.
If this was how the album was sequenced throughout it would’ve been stronger to me. But since it was not, my feelings about it is as such: Cool, cool. But show me next time, don’t just tell me.
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