[REVIEW] “Dex Meets Dexter” — Famous Dex Shows Low Quality Tracks Are Harder To Make Than We Expect
Famous Dex seems to go back to his old 2016 style in this album, but with much more unique production. His finally switches up his flow too, after sounding the same for a while. The lyrics are the weakest point however, and I believe he could have done a better job at it. His vocals use a lot of auto-tune, and usually I wouldn’t like that because only a few artists can actually pull it off, such as Travis Scott. However, songs like SAID SO prove Dexter can sound melodic and catchy. This album comes with a theme defined by its title.
“The whole concept of Dex Meets Dexter is like this good guy [Dex] meeting this crazy guy [Dexter]”
The album has two different sounds that are sung by polarizing archetypes. Dex is the melodic, smooth side where he puts in actual work into the music. Dexter is the autistic, low effort, ad-libbed, leaned up soundcloud rapper people love to hate on. Famous Dex executes both sides well.
That’s the lesson we must learn from this album. What Famous Dex confirms is that New Age rappers understand the context of their sound. They are often accused of low quality lyrics and using generic hype beats, as if they don’t know it themselves. But really they do, and they do it intentionally. The more low effort a great song turns out, the better.
In fact I will argue that this craftsmanship takes more effort than one may think. As an engineer I know what it takes to build perfect system. Let’s say we want to build a bridge, but not just any bridge, it has to work perfectly. Meaning it will take a lot of time and effort into building and engineering said bridge. No one will argue against that fact. However, what if we intentionally wanted to build a bridge that just barely worked?
It must teeter to the edge of total system collapse, but it’s not allowed to fail. This takes much more effort and creativity to build. That critical point of no return is a lot harder to maintain than we may think. Famous Dex, and many New Age rappers, find themselves walking this very fine line.
Dex tracks: PROVE IT, JAPAN, CELINE, SAID SO, LIGHT
Dexter tracks: CHUMP, CHAMPION, TAKE HER, PICK IT UP
HEMI and PROVE IT go hard.
4/5 Overall it’s good to finally hear a polished album from Dexter. A part of me wanted a little more Dexter sound with the UHH YEAH UHH WHAT OHHMAGODDAMM, but Dex is more in control, and that’s totally fine. I love the way the album ends with the last two tracks, but I wish Dexter spent more time with the lyrics as they fell flat for both archetypes. The production is unique, and that’s refreshing.
