56. "WTF........Guess Harry Fraud was busy?" In response to In response to 0
Swap him out for Party Supplies and this project mighta had a chance.
The sound they're going for production wise on Only In America is so cynically whiteboy fraternity funk-rock that it's sad.
The Passage is just a passage of time on the way to Easy Rider which I guess is supposed to be the album's magnum opus but if you really had to sit thru all this bullshit to get there then by then it's tough to care.
That joint is nearly a year old already and was always a better video than song anyway.
I don't know how Party Supplies, Ronson or Bronson got AB gassed enough to think he was gonna really be able to make this new acid-rock fake shit work for a full album, especially on his debut.
I get wanting to do something different and hey, on Baby Blue at least, it works in a ramshackle kinda charming one-off way.
But those should have been the exceptions to the norm.
This dude is not a dynamic enough artist to play around too much or divert too far from his formula and his collaborators in Party Supplies are certainly not the ones to put it together.
Alchemist did well on Terry, the other two beats felt like interlude leftovers.
That opening Billy Joel loop and sung-hook on Brand New Car was trash, tho I'm sure using Joel in that way was some kind of childhood Queens/Long Island homage but to a kid from Jersey I don't give a fuck.
Springsteen & Sinatra both son Billy Joel and I still wouldn't bother to use either to jump off my debut rap album.
Bronson was far better off just spitting over what Fraud did with that Journey chop on "Heel Toe" two years ago.
I might have to start a class to teach some of these white rappers that inevitably get roped into tapping back into classic rock, how to do so with some degree of class & taste.
If you don't really love that genre beyond surface level songs and imagery, then leave it alone.
Because all these corny attempts done by Eminem, Asher Roth and unbelievably now Bronson (who I thought was actually much cooler than this) just reek of being 'management suggestions' while the artist themself doesn't really know enough about rock as a genre to be able to use it for good.
That will probably be a condition that only gets worse now that rock & roll is effectively irrelevant as a current genre in the mainstream.
But anyway, that's a story for another day & post.
The bottom line is an effort to be multifaceted rather than catering to this dude's meat-and-potatoes strengths as an MC and a personality......burnt this record like toast.
All the best shit on it I heard ahead of time and at least two if not a few of his mixtapes (none of which are certified classics or anything) are better than this album ended up being.
There's prolly five tracks on this worth keeping, only maybe two or three you'd call top-shelf material amongst his own best.
And to reiterate for Bronsolino, who I agree with Hood isn't really the issue here (other than of course him not having the vision to be able to steer his own album of course), go see Harry Fraud again ASAP.