Filed under: Music, Music Reviews | Tags: desert storm, fabolous, hip hop, keri hilson, lil wayne, losos way
Initial reactions of the kneejerk variety don’t allow for the whole situation to be taken in, so when I looked at the tracklisting for Fabo’s ‘Loso’s Way’ my initial reaction was wavy to say the least. For a so-called concept album having the class 2009 on the guestlist looks like a strong ‘put one of these joints on the radio’ message rather than any attempt to model the lyrics around a story. For Loso’s 5th effort you’d expect something a bit more than this low calibre knock off. From the title you can see this is a somewhat late nod to Al Pacino’s Carlito’s Way (released 1993) with Loso’s idea being straight from the Jay-Z school of thought (American Gangster) and parallel the plot of the film through the tracks. The problem is that listening to the tracks you immediately realise the idea of basing the album around the plot was too much hard work so Loso went back and made a handful of hook reliant, mediocre, soulless radio tracks with a sprinkling of gangsta persona thrown in for good measure. The link to American Gangster doesn’t stop there as J appears on one of the tracks with a sample from one of the tracks that didn’t make the cut on American Gangster ‘Money Goes’ with Loso spitting, “see mama, you’re my Rihanna / pull an umbrella when you see drama ”.
What you feel listening to this is Fabolous wants a big hit record to get back on the scene as his reputation is flailing as an artist reduced to just catchy punchlines but with no depth to his arsenal.
The fall down track is obviously ‘Throw It In The Bag’ for the pure lack of imagination that went into it although plenty of other efforts try to takes its thunder as the worst track on the album ‘My Time’ sounds like it should have T-Pain on the hook, but it’s not up to club track standard he brings so Jeremih provides the autotune. I’m putting my foot down on these tracks from now on; The-Dream is a gimmick.
The trademark Fab flow is evident at times on ‘Imma Do It’ he raps, “why don’t you practice safe sex and go fuck yourself”. The real star of the show is ‘Everything, Everyday, Everywhere’ which features Keri Hilson and bumps like a big track should. This is where the best lyrics come in one hot track like, “ask theses other silicone niggas about how being fake feel”.
No surprises that Mr 2k8 Weezy jumps on ‘Salute’ but it’s probably the biggest disappointment on the album as Wayne’s verse is weak. ‘Lullaby’ has production from The Alchemist who should be a stable on every artist’s album and Fab makes the most of the beat with leaving his normal brand of catchy word play for a more menacing approach. Ne-Yo appears on ‘Makin Love’, another JD produced two step radio joint and Ryan Leslie holds down ‘The Fabolous Life’ which is easily forgettable as the majority of 2nd half of the album is. That is until ‘Stay’ which seems like the biographical track that the album was built up to feature, with Loso dealing with his father and his own journey into fatherhood rapping “Weezy’s at the awards with Ms Carter / Not his date I’m talkin bout his daughter / now that’s stuntin like your daddy, cos it crazy when you wanna be nothing like your daddy”.
What happens is the top dog gets hounded out by too many other cats on the billin’. After an hour listening to this Fabolous album I turned it off and put on ‘Street Dreams’ to see if it was how I remembered. Looking back that was Loso’s best work and since then it’s been downhill. This is purely for Loso fans; he won’t be gaining any love from anyone who hasn’t copped his albums before. The truth is the 3 singles are typical Fab tracks which will get the album enough buzz then theres another couple of tracks worth listening to but it’s 50/50.
It’s a 6.0 from The Bawuss.
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