Wiley - Evolve or Be Extinct

Grime. Essentially dubstep meets rap, invented by our friends in Britain. Dubstep was their baby, too, actually. I have recently just found grime in the last two years or so. My first experience of dubstep was around the second semester of my freshman year in college, but I was exposed to British rap much, much earlier, when I was in either second, third, fourth, or fifth grade. i can't remember. It was The Streets' first album "Original Pirate Material", which is, in my opinion, perfect in every sense of the word. Sadly, none of The Streets' other albums were as good as his debut, but I digress. This is about Wiley, considered the godfather of grime, and his eighth album, "Evolve or Be Extinct".

This is both the easiest and hardest record to get into, regardless of whether you are familiar with grime or Wiley, or not. It is a whopping 22 tracks long, which is roughly an hour's worth of music. At the same time, though, the beats are smooth and catchy, and the lyrics are whip smart, even when they're silly. Especially then.


Be warned: if you have never listened to grime before but you want to get into it, listen to this record in intervals. It is monster record that requires time and patience to digest. It is quite long, and the last thing you want to do is listen to the album just to get it over with. I'm not saying every track is perfect...on the contrary, some tracks are better than others, for sure. But each song deserves a chance, because they all comprise the album. And this album is quite good.


REVIEW RATING:
★★★★★

The Weeknd - Thursday

Why not start out with one of my favorite artists' second solo attempt? Seems random enough.

Abel Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd, is an R&B artist in the loosest sense of the word. He uses sound more than lyrics to convey audial imagery, as perfectly exemplified by his first mixtape, "House of Balloons". His third mixtape, "Echoes of Silence", got praise, as well, but his second attempt, "Thursday" did not get that much love. So, I will try to analyze it and see why.

Admittedly, after listening to such a masterpiece as "House of Balloons", "Thursday" does seem a bit of a disappointment the first time through. But after listening to it in isolation, rather than as a continuation of "House of Balloons", one realizes that it is still an excellent musical venture. True, it is harder to get into and is less catchy than "House of Balloons", but it is definitely worth the effort. It is still the Weeknd, after all. Even crap by the Weeknd is gold to our ears.

After all the defense I gave it, I do not, however, mean to say that "Thursday" is without its faults. No one is perfect, and this mixtape definitely has its weaknesses. I am a fan of Drake, but the track he is featured on, "The Zone", is actually one of the weaker ones, as is the final track, "Heaven or Las Vegas". Drake can have a couple of bad songs here and there and it's still kosher, but it is always sad to listen to a record, devote yourself to it, and then be disappointed with the last song. It leaves a bad aftertaste. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why "Thursday" is seen as an afterthought in the trilogy of mixtapes Tesfaye released in 2011, despite it being the second one and being highly anticipated.

The strengths, however, are just as plentiful. Standout tracks include "Life of the Party", the title track, and both parts of "The Birds". Hell, even "Lonely Star" is pretty good. So what does this tell us? The first half of the record is phenomenal, then it weakens with Drake, then regains it's footing, begins to become forgetful, and just falls off at the end. Thus giving us an impression that it all "sucks". Here's the thing, though: "The Zone" is really good UNTIL Drake starts to spit. So it is unfair to say the whole song stinks when it's just the end that's lame, but the same thing happens with songs as it does with albums as a whole: bad endings psychologically give us bad memories of the piece.

As I said before, this record is pretty solid as far as I'm concerned. I've listened to it as a whole a good four or five times before writing this critique, so I hope I'm not biased. But to me, a Picasso is a Picasso, a Beethoven is a Beethoven, and a mixtape by the Weeknd is a mixtape by the Weeknd. And in case you missed it, that's a good thing.

Get the Weeknd's mixtape "Thursday", along with his other two excellent mixtapes "House of Balloons" and "Echoes of Silence", here.

REVIEW RATING:

★★★★★