Big K.R.I.T. - Return of 4eva
Return of 4eva can be pretty accurately described as the kind of Kanye West album that Kanye West stopped making years ago. Yes, producer-rapper Big K.R.I.T. has a Mississippi drawl and his drum patterns owe more to stuttering Southern hi-hats than East Coast boom-bap, but the similarities are inescapable: omnipresent soul samples, the awkward but endearingly earnest flow, the humble-dreamer-turned-overnight-success narrative arc, conscious-rap leanings without getting Talib-Kweli-level-grating, songs about God (!). 4eva isn't exactly as good as The College Dropout, but then as a free mixtape it's hardly supposed to be, and the banger-to-mash ratio here is stunningly high. K.R.I.T. as a producer is pretty great with chilled-out gentle-head-nod driving rap (more often than not actually about cars - see standout "Time Machine"), but he's at his best when Cuisinarting up vocals for real trunk-rattlers - see "R4 Theme Song" and a remix of "Country Shit" aided greatly by Ludacris tearing up a guest appearance like he hasn't in years. Some are going to sneer at this album for its total lack of innovation, and K.R.I.T. is nothing if not retro, but as rap revivalists go, K.R.I.T. is up there with Freddie Gibbs as one of the best working today.
G-Side - The ONE...COHESIVE
You'll have to leave Mississippi for Alabama to find real rap innovation. There's nothing particularly revolutionary about Huntsville rap duo of G-Side themselves, although they're ferociously talented - pairing the loud, thick voice of ST 2 Lettaz with the thin rasp of Yung Clova approaches Ghostface-Raekwon levels of rap duo synergy, and it's interesting to hear an album that gets into the particulars of label-less minor rap stardom as deeply as these guys do ("Waiting for my passport at the last minute/Next week is my first show in Toronto/And if it don't come then I don't go/But I guess you could say that's one of them good problems)". Furthermore, their Rolodex is almost as much of an asset as their flows. None of the many guests on this album have achieved any real degree of fame, and their hunger is luckily very evident - watch out in particular for the chainsaw voice of Mic Strange on "Never".
The innovation here is in the stunning, next-level production, mostly by the Block Beattaz, although Clams Casino provides a monster of a beat that is hilariously mismatched to a song about, um, sexting ("Pictures"). Draped in reverb and swelling with hyperdramatic strings and wall-of-sound synths, these beats go for a kind of cosmic drama that's usually only the province of rock music, and the result is thrilling. This is no small part due to the voracious taste of the production teams here, who seem as likely to throw in a Beach House sample (album standout "How Far") as they are an 808. It's very hard to think of another rap album that sounds quite like this, and that alone is probably reason enough to listen to this thing.
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