IDK - USEE4YOURSELF ALBUM REVIEW

-
I love that the visuals for this album on YouTube are just him building a Game Boy successfully for about 45 minutes.


IDK is an artist that came onto my radar earlier this year not because of a song, but a song announcement. He said that a song off his upcoming album will feature Westside Gunn, the late MF DOOM, and the elusive Jay Electronica all on one track. That’s a stacked feature list, but on one song? I hadn’t heard of IDK before this, so I went and listened to his debut album Is He Real? and his two IDK & Friends collaborative EPs. All of these projects were pretty cool, but Is He Real? really stuck with me the most. While it wasn’t too mind-blowing, I had a lot of fun with it. One thing I noticed on that album though is that the features on it came and went, and maybe this new album, USEE4YOURSELF, would be the same. So, let’s just get right into the new album.

There’s a bit of a light concept here, but it’s not entirely explored here. Or at least it isn’t explored as much as he intended. The idea of toxic masculinity being in his mind when he was younger could make for a great project as a whole, but it really just isn’t explored as I said. The features here are pretty stacked, with contributions from Young Thug, Offset, Lucky Daye, SiR, T-Pain, Swae Lee, Rico Nasty, Sevyn Streeter, and Slick Rick. As I said earlier, though, they come and go pretty quickly. Surprisingly, the track with Westside, DOOM, and Jay is here in the form of “Red,” who are all oddly uncredited on streaming services. Sadly, though, the same thing goes for these features too. Jay Electronica’s verse has a lot of anti-vaccine stuff in it, but that’s really nothing new for him. Overall, IDK does give some good performances throughout this album, and “Peloton” is definitely one of the best songs he’s put out that I’ve heard from him so far.

USEE4YOURSELF is a pretty tight album from one of the most underrated rappers in the game right now. It’s pretty seamless and varied, something that every artist should strive for their album to be. After getting over the relative disappointment from the features, this is IDK’s album, after all, so he should be the main focus. That he is, and hopefully this is the time where we stop sleeping on him.


8/10


Listen here

YouTube Music




USEE4YOURSELF is a Warner release.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lil Yachty - Let’s Start Here. ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
I gotta keep holding to my promises about reviewing. I always love it when an artist takes a risk with their material. Whether or not it works out, I usually admire the risk and appreciate the fact that any artist can do something out of their comfort zone. Either way, the artist in question today is Lil Yachty, a rapper that has basically become a joke the longer his career’s gone on. However, going into a new genre out of left field isn’t totally new to rap. Childish Gambino jumping into the world of neo-soul with Awaken, My Love! , along with later projects from Mac Miller and Tyler, the Creator having more jazz influences, have proven that turning to a new genre for new ideas has worked out pretty well. Yachty, however, has turned to psychedelic rock in the vein of Tame Impala for this new album, Let’s Start Here. to mark the new chapter of his career. Let’s get into it. Having stuck around with Yachty during the rough patches, I can easily say that Let’s Start Here. is his best ...
Read more

Kendrick Lamar - GNX ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
Woah, a new review? After this long? Yeah, sure. Why not? I got some plans in the works to keep this active in some form, and I’ll show off some more details in the post after this! What timing for an album to end up bringing this little site back, even if it’s just for a little bit of time. The last post on here was last June, and a lot has happened in my life since then, whether it’s in music or my personal life. Arguably, the biggest moment in music of the year was the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, which exploded just before this summer with “Like That,” a song off of the first of two Future and Metro Boomin’ albums from this year, WE DON’T TRUST YOU . I don’t need to go into just how massive this beef was (and in still is in some ways), but if you need one major takeaway, I’ll say this: One of the biggest hits of the year, regardless of genre, essentially boiled down to Kendrick calling Drake a pedophile for four-and-a-half minutes. “Not Like Us,” a song where one of the m...
Read more

Porter Robinson - Nurture ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
I wanna just lay in a field of grass, but I’m allergic to pollen :( I’ve always had a very strange relationship with electronic music. The bad music I’ve heard in the genre has been some of the worst music I’ve ever heard, and the good stuff is some of the greatest music I’ve ever heard. For some context, we have artists like The Chainsmokers on one end, and Daft Punk on the other. There are some subgenres in here too that work. Electropop is one of them, being an obvious fusion of pop and electronic music. In the little community of the AOTY website, the users there have been hyped as hell for this Porter Robinson album, Nurture . It’s apparently his first in seven years, and I’ve only heard one single from it, titled “Musician.” While it wasn’t the best electropop song I’ve heard, it’s certainly an interesting sound that I think can work pretty well. So, with how anticipated it is in the AOTY community, I figured I should take a listen and see what all the fuss is about. Let’s get in...
Read more