[REVIEW] Not All Heroes Wear Capes — Metro Boomin Enters 2018
21 Savage and Travis Scott. Issa Rodeo.
Last year Metro produced three albums. Perfect Timing with Nav, which was really good, but Nav wasted those beats. Then Metro released Without Warning which was my personal favorite. Two months later he released the flop Double or Nothing. It’s a good thing Metro took a year off afterwards because it seemed like he ran out of ideas.
And now we can see how he’s changed his sound in all the right places. First and foremost, Metro has upgraded the dark and synthetic style that nursed his signature sound since Savage Mode. This album has been influenced largely by R&B and Orchestra. Metro found a way to explore those sounds and retain his style at the same time. His transition flow alone tells us he really took his time to create a coherent and complete project. The drums are newer and refreshing
Now I don’t want to compare Metro to Kanye directly, since would be an unfair and wrongful, but I can’t see a better example for comparing Metro to Kanye for some specific cases. The three prominent artist on this tape: 21 Savage, Travis Scott, and Young Thug, have all released solo albums recently that can feel a little repetitive. But Metro tactfully crafts a sound behind them that fits their vocals and flow. Metro’s production is similar to Kanye’s in the sense that its catered very well to the rappers, and has the layers to accompany three of them at once. This is actually really hard to do and can be messed up very easily. But of course Metro is very one dimensional when compared to Kanye. He can’t toe up to Through The Wire, Heartless, All Of The Lights, Black Skinhead, Freee etc.
Travis Scott and Young Thug can never create a bad song together. They have a long history of creating so many great songs:
PUTP, Nothin But Net, Skyfall, Mamacita, Yeah Yeah, Maria I’m Drunk, Oo Nana, Yah Yah, Floyd Mayweather. And Skyfall is still one of the best Travis songs.
21 delivers probably the funniest verses throughout the whole album. Complete gems. He somehow sounds soft and hard at the same time. Whispering a full verse and then switching it up “Y’ALL THOUGHT I WAS GONNA WHISPER THE WHOLE TIME?” I believe this is 21’s way of paying homage to NAV for whispering a verse from Astroworld /s.
Some of 21’s best lines
“Levi Jeans, low self esteem he on black people meet”
“Who want smoke cause I want smoke, I had a wet dream about beef”
“In Bikini Bottom I’m with Sandy”
“You know, I was racing down the highway earlier today. Riding I-20. I happened to see a n*gga I robbed back in the day. You know what? He was happy to see me .”
“You a b*tch so that make her a dyke.”
21 is probably the funniest rapper this year 😂. Although that last quote was taken from Lil Wayne’s Green Ranger
“You a dyke cause your man a pussy”
But Wayne has fathered all these new rappers so I can’t blame 21.
Swae Lee’s showcases how heavenly he can sound without autotune. Gunna will be overseen on his track Space Cadet because of all these other big names, but do not sleep on that song. Travis conjures up his inner Kanye in Only 1 sounding exactly like 808s Kanye. Tay Keith somehow finds himself on this album. Thugger falls in love with a lesbian and is left in shambles.
5/5 This is it chief
