Showing posts with label fashawn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fashawn. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

video review: 'the ecology' by fashawn


And THAT covers the majority of my backlog. Now onto a very busy week (in RL and reviews), and first up is twenty-one pilots. Stay tuned!

Monday, May 18, 2015

album review: 'the ecology' by fashawn

Well, apparently for me this week is catch-up week, because man, this slipped the net. Not going to lie, I forgot that I was going to cover this when it first came out, and I'm kicking myself for it. And it was either this or talk about the new Tech N9ne album, and look, for as much as I respect his talent as a technical lyricist and his charisma, I can't get behind the majority of his production or his content, and his most recent release was even more guest star overloaded and all over the place than usual, with so many mainstream guests below his level included in a way that looks desperate more than anything else.

So that I've pissed off a fair number of you, let's talk about a rapper I actually like a fair bit more, and who has never really come across as having something to prove: Fashawn. West coast MC, affiliated with Nas and known for working with a slew of excellent producers like Evidence and Exile, he dropped his debut album Boy Meets World in 2009 - and my God, that record was something special. He may have been telling a very similar story to many rappers in talking about his come-up, but there was a spirit of youthful hope and optimism that drove that album, and paired with detailed yet plain-spoken stories and gorgeous old-school melodic production that really grabbed me. To me he fell into a similar lane with J.Cole, but came across with a more assured, tightly written presentation that resonated with me a lot more.

And yet after 2009, he seemed to drop off everyone's radar. He did a lot of touring, a couple mixtapes, put together a pretty damn solid collaboration album with Murs in 2012, and dropped a slew of guest verses, most notably for me on 'Banging Sound', from The Alchemist & Evidence collaboration album Lord Steppington early last year. From there, he signed to Nas' label Mass Appeal and set himself up for a long-awaited solo sophomore album... which I ended up missing for no adequately explained reason. I think my justification was that the reviews had only been lukewarm, but really, that's not much of an excuse, as others have absolutely raved about it. So about three months late, I dug into Fashawn's The Ecology - how is it?