It’s like Cordae wanted this to be his Black Album without actually having a Jay-Z level discography
It wasn’t bad, but you don’t need to hear it twice
By Tariq Ghanzi, Contributor
Cordae is a talented rapper in the sense that he can actually string ideas into lines and maintain a song, but his other talent is his ability to make oddly forgettable albums out of good pieces. At times, his bars are not bad at all, one-liners including “Like Obama’s kids, I came outta my shell (Michelle)” shows that he has the ability to generate clever wordplay. Then he turns around and says something like “Consider this a venomous haiku/this ain’t a verse, n***a” and you just have to shake your head at his wackness.
As a whole, the album seems to be an attempt at standing out over beats that want to fit in. But then again, when he tries to brag to listeners about how much money he made last year he sounds like any old uninspiring new rapper. At times he sounds like he could have it in him to be one of the better rappers of this generation, which would be a great thing to see. But then he ends up rapping about his money, cars and sexual exploits in a completely generic fashion. Though the album does include a remix of the hit track “The Parables,” the album as a whole isn’t as driven by hunger as that song was. Instead, Cordae seems sort of content to just celebrate as if he had proved himself over a series of albums. It’s like Cordae wanted this to be his Black Album without actually having a Jay-Z level discography.
Luckily, the beats are all good and the flows are pretty nice so this is an easy album to put on as you go to work or something and vibe to. But the problem is that this becomes sort of background music too quickly. As one Twitter poster named Venzo put it “Cordae album crazy [because] every song [was] good but [I don’t] ever [want to hear them] again.” The whole album is strong in the sense that the beats and the words are listenable and in a weird way enjoyable, but it’s weak in that you will never feel the need to hear this album more than twice. It just kind of happened while you were listening and then it ended a little bit later.
I think Cordae isn’t a bad rapper, and I think there are many worse rappers out there, but I don’t think this was a good effort. This was sort of a slightly better than mediocre but not at all great album. Rappers should have confidence, but they should also try to back that confidence up in the lyrics and verses they write. Otherwise, you might end up with listeners looking down at your forgettable album From a Bird’s Eye View.
