Remember how back in the day, in the 70s and ’80s, folks like Public Enemy would release BIG ALBUMS, STATEMENT ALBUMS, STATE OF THE ALBUM ALBUMS.
This is the opposite of 808S And Heartbreaks and Man On The Moon. The two emo-hop masterpieces were personal statements about emotional disintegration. “I’ve got 99 problems and they’re all bitches” Kid Cudi rapped and Cudi travelled back from a lonely Central US kid trying to break through to the baffled young superstar of Man On The World. Kanye lost his mother and blamed his ex.
That won’t be the Drake album and it isn’t the B.oB. Album. Though elements will be included.
B.o.B is the biggest dick swinging on B.O.B. Presents the Adventures Of Bobby Ray -or rather he isn’t. Sometimes he is. Bobby Ray wants to be everything to you. Emote with hayley Williams, swing it with T.I., call a song “Ghost In The Machine (a terrible song by the way), get a real good Eminem rap in there, hark back (and really back) to the Vietnam war and for the icing on the cake, hook up with Vampire Weekend and Weezer. Multicult, emo, rapping, hot shit, hot damn, everything and then some from the Atlanta rapper signed to T.I.’s label.
The younger rapper garnered a hit single earlier this year on “Nothing On You” a silky smooth little come on that hit the tweens pleasure zone big time.
And the follow up, “Big I” was nothing like it. A hardish rap number featuring T.I.. “Magic” is all Weezer plus but better than Rivers and Lil Wayne earlier this year. Both “Airplanes” are awesome (I know what I wrote, I changed my mind) and currently at # 2 on itunes download. Between this song and her cover of “Bad Romance”, Hayley has come some distance in rehabillating her career after Paramore’s deadly current album.
Plus a ton of true crapoloa like the experimental “9th Dimension”, the bathotic “Don’t Let Me Fall”, and the truly ghastly “Ghost In The machine”.
Plus a real grower, the discofried “Fame” and a handful of also rans.
So a big State Of the State. A big calling card. That is as distracted and refracted as Bobby Ray is: he wants to mean everything to everyone, but he ain’t there yet.