6th Place: home – “It's just a fond farewell to a friend”1. Frank Ocean – NikesFirst Impressions:So a big part of why I can’t get too into hip-hop is that it’s a very lyrical genre and I am the type of person who very rarely pays much mind to lyrics. Anyways uuuhh those are some chipmunk’d vocals alright. Is he just gonna do the whole song in that style? The beat here is mostly percussion too which doesn’t tend to work for me, either. Okay finally something other than chipmunk vocals. Yeah man I dunno this felt really dry to me and the annoying vocals don’t help. (MEDIOCRE)
Final Thoughts:Mmm, okay, maybe I was a tad harsh on this at first. I think some of the lyrics here are alright, at the very least? The bit with the shoutouts to dead friends (?) especially but it all at least… sounds alright, the chipmunk vocals didn’t really end up grating on me much at all surprisingly. Some of the lyrics feel pretty incohesive or all over the place though, as well. I dunno. It’s a nice enough sounding song that isn’t really unpleasant and it’s vaguely memorable but I can’t say I really particularly enjoy much of it either.
5.5/102. Frank Ocean – IvyFirst Impressions:Alright, I like this one more right off the bat. For one the instrumentation is mostly atmospheric guitar bits and the vocals are in a proper register. There isn’t really any rapping in this one period, really. He isn’t a technically great singer but he can emote well enough and that’s what really matters. It sort of mostly just rides one vibe the whole way through, though, aside from a louder/annoying bit towards the end. It’s alright. (AVERAGE)
Final Thoughts:Aside from the line “I broke your heart last week / You'll probably feel better by the weekend” I don’t know if there’s much here that connects with me. It’s a pretty straightforward breakup tune, from what I’m getting from this one? It also doesn’t really have… any grounded melody to it. The background music is watery and jumbled, it’s clearly meant to give space to the vocals which is fine enough for this kind of music but then the vocals… I mean, yeah, he sounds nice but he doesn’t really have many good melodies, some of the chorus is okay but it’s only even vaguely recognizeable as a chorus too. I just. Don’t really get much from this. And the vocal effects towards the end reeeally sound bad. Meh. Slight positives, slight negatives, I don’t really have much of a strong opinion on this either way, ultimately.
5/103. Mac Miller – LaddersFirst Impressions:Gonna feel bad if I hate this because then I’m speaking ill of the dead, huh? The beat of this one I like, kinda funky. His rapping is like, half-sung half-trying to sound forceful and it ends up in this weird in-between space where it’s kind of neither and sounds kind of awkward. This song has an actual chorus at least which I appreciate. Yeah I think the instrumentation of this one is enough to give it a pass, and the chorus sounds fine enough too. (DECENT)
Final Thoughts:I forgot how it takes almost a full minute for this song to really start proper, considering the beat is by far the most interesting/compelling thing about this. Miller himself sounds pretty dang bad, though not as bad as he sounds on that… other… song here, we’ll get to that though. The bit with the horns that pops up a few times is pretty dang fun though. And when he’s rapping over the beat he rides it pretty well, still doesn’t sound great but it fits in fine enough. I do feel to some extent I like this song more by comparison to a lot of the other stuff you put on this EP, and like, probably? I’ve heard better in the vein of funky hip-hop too, though, so I’m not, blown away by this, but I don’t mind it.
6.25/104. KIDS SEE GHOSTS – 4th DimensionFirst Impressions:Honestly these two are the ones I’m looking forward to the least because I just flat don’t like Kanye West as a person and don’t want to give his music the time of day. He’s at least decent at his delivery, Cudi doesn’t sound as good in comparison. The beat isn’t really my kind of thing, plunderphonics is a style that can go wrong really easily and while it doesn’t sound awful it doesn’t really… evoke any emotion for me. This isn’t actively unpleasant but there isn’t really anything here I like either. (MEDIOCRE)
Final Thoughts:The beat is okay, I guess. Mostly it’s the whoa-oh’s. And the muted vocals in general. Buuuut there’s a lot about this I don’t like. The weird laughing bit in the middle is eeehh, Kanye isn’t very interesting, Cudi’s bit has grown on me a little though, I actually feel like he sounds at least decently “intimidating” for lack of a better word and fits the bassy production more. There’s something about that voice clip at the end that I like, take offense to on an artistic level though. It’s short enough that it feels more like a fragment of a song than anything and even the stuff about it I find… okay, comes with a catch, though. Not for me.
4.25/105. KIDS SEE GHOSTS – Cudi MontageFirst Impressions:I don’t even really get the title of this one. I’d expect it’d be like, just Cudi here but no, both of them are on here too. Again, not really anything about this production or beat that I like, the chorus here at least is solid? I’m really trying here, man, but this stuff just flat out isn’t for me. (MEDIOCRE)
Final Thoughts:Okay, actually there’s some bits of this I do like. I like the modulated vocals on the chorus, or I guess what serves as the chorus? And the humming and synths that match up against it, it actually does create a pretty good atmosphere. I don’t like much of anything about the verses though, neither performer is very interesting and the weird guitar line doesn’t work at all. I think the chorus is enough to elevate this a little with a decent atmosphere, cut out the verses entirely and replace them with something better and I could see this being a genuinely good song actually but as it stands there’s about a third to a half of it I don’t care much for and I don’t like the chorus thaaaat much either.
6/106. Post Malone – Over NowFirst Impressions:So I’m also decently familiar with Post Malone simply for how popular he’s been in the mainstream recently. A problem I’ve consistently seen with him is that even when his music is good, his content seems to get worse the better the song sounds, like I Fall Apart which could be genuinely good if the lyrics weren’t trash. In this case, well, he sounds more awake than a lot of the other stuff I’ve heard from him & the content, while probably not amazing, doesn’t have anything obviously awful about it either. It probably shouldn’t surprise me that the two most song-shaped tracks on this EP so far are the ones I’m enjoying the most. (DECENT)
Final Thoughts:Goddammit I’m so conflicted about this one. For one, it’s Post Malone. Who is just the most basic, unlikeable white guy coopting hip-hop culture to repackage and market to pasty-faced teenage white boys terrified of any skin tone darker than their own. That’s not the conversation for this thread though. And second, the lyrical content is just total trash. Third, Malone always sings like he’s half-drunk. So I don’t know why the hell this sounds as good as it does. His singing sucks but he’s got good melodies to work with, the awful content he somehow makes work with his delivery, and the production is pretty damn good, it’s got power, it’s got groove, it’s got atmosphere. I feel reeeeally bad about liking this one, but goddammit, I do. I am definitely not checking out the album, but what the hell, you win this time, Postman.
7.25/107. Frank Ocean – SeigfriedFirst Impressions:Okay, I am actually pretty into the sparse and atmospheric guitar here matched with some more soulful, emotive delivery on his part. Also I see where the EP title comes from, now. The swell in the middle is pretty effective. Sort of falls apart after that though, I feel, like, any sense of rhythm just kind of disappears. Overall still pretty nice though, sure. (DECENT)
Final Thoughts:Technically of all three Frank Ocean songs here this one is the one that “sounds” the nicest. It’s guitar-driven and he’s got pretty good vocal melodies throughout. I don’t really find the melodies that memorable though, and the instrumentation feels just a bit too empty, especially since there is clearly meant to be a decent bit of intensity to the vocals here. The only bit that gets some swell is, ironically, the bit where the vocals lose any sense of rhythm and the song basically turns ambient for a bit. I think losing the rhythm kiiind of kills the flow of the song though, it turns the whole thing from a “song” to more of a “poetry recital”. The last little vocal bit at least kind of gets back on track but it’s a little too late to win me back by that point. I dunno. I don’t really actively dislike this one but there was potential for something better here and it doesn’t quite work for me. Probably my favorite of his three songs here but I can’t say I’m won over by any of them.
5.75/108. Mac Miller – 2009First Impressions:At first was wondering if this was instrumental. When the vocals came in I started wishing it stayed instrumental though, he sounds real bad, geez. Yeeeah I wouldn’t mind this beat on its own but I legitimately can’t even care about what he’s saying when the delivery is just this flat-out bad. There really isn’t much else to this song besides the repetitive beat and the vocals either sooo. (MEDIOCRE)
Final Thoughts:This song is practically a Shakespearean tragedy. The intro is so dang good, such a pleasant piece of music and a solid emotional climax for this EP as a whole. And lyrically this song is pretty solid too, it’s self-reflective in a way that usually appeals to me. But dear god, most of this is pretty much just unlistenable from how awful he sounds. Barely on the rhythm, barely even melodic, I have to assume he was drugged up as hell when he recorded this. And he basically is just going nonstop for several minutes straight, not that the backing instrumentation is very good either. Sigh. And it’s sooooo long. And it just runs a full minute after the vocals actually stop, which I mean, makes it more tolerable, but. I could see this song being really good if someone else was performing it, and if the beat did more, and if it was shorter, and now that’s a lot of “ifs” to try and salvage a song that, in its current state, I really just can’t get much into at all.
3/10Overall:First Impressions:Not really surprising to you or to me that I wasn’t super into this one. A few tracks I liked, a lot of this annoyed me or was a little boring.
I didn’t find most of it actively unpleasant but I didn’t really especially like anything here either. The closest was, amusingly enough, the Post Malone track. I also don’t even know if it’s especially cohesive within itself, or at least, some of the tracks don’t really fit stylistically with the others – Ladders is way too upbeat and fun for the rest of the songs here, and the two Kids See Ghosts songs don’t really have the same general atmosphere as the rest here either.
Final Thoughts:I never rule 6’d this because, for one, I don’t think it’s the weakest EP here, and it takes a lot for me to really want to rule 6 anything – St. Vincent was genuinely that bad and I stand by that decision. And anyways rule 6’ing in an album roulette is a lot different than in an EP roulette where participants actually have to put in some effort to send me something and I’d like to respect that. That being said. Yeah. There was no way this was ever going to end in anything but a cut. It’s not that I even actively dislike much of this, it’s just that very little of it works at all for me. There’s exactly one song that really makes me feel much of anything and it’s the one that’s a guilty pleasure. And like I said in my first impression this isn’t even that cohesive just inside the genre of hip-hop, I’m at least aware enough to tell that some of these tracks have vastly different goals than others. I will say that aside from, ahem, that last track, I don’t really find any of this unpleasant to listen to, but it’s not winning me over on a genre I’ve never been too interested in to begin with, either. Ehh.
Round 1 Final Standings:1. Puppies_On_Acid
2. TAC
3. Lethean
4. senecadawg2
5. ariich
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6. home
7. Train of Naught
Song Rankings:1.
Great Leap Skyward – Black Sea of Trees 2.
Altar Of Plagues – Earth: As A Womb3.
Angra – The Shaman 4.
Cigarettes After Sex – Apocalypse5.
Bill Callahan – One Fine Morning6.
3 – The World is Borne of Flame 7.
Imperium Dekadenz – Dis Manibvs 8.
Foxy Shazam – Intro / Bombs Away9.
Angra – ØMNI – Silence Inside 10.
Novallo – Give Gravity a Choice11.
3 – The End is Begun12.
Foxy Shazam – The Only Way To My Heart… 13.
Khors – Through the Realm of Unborn Stars 14.
Post Malone – Over Now 15.
Anata – Downward Spiral into Madness 16.
Supremacy – Just Before Dying17.
Bill Callahan – Riding For the Feeling18.
Almah – Almah19.
Falloch – Beyond Embers and the Earth20.
Angra – The Shadow Hunter 21.
Conjurer – Hollow 22.
Thousand Sun Sky – Echoes From Time’s Passing 23.
Bizali – Uh-huh 24.
Mac Miller – Ladders 25.
Novallo – White Phoenix 26.
KIDS SEE GHOSTS – Cudi Montage 27.
Gürschach – The Night The Sky Rained Nukes 28.
Bittencourt Project – O Pastor 29.
Copeland – As Above, So Alone 30.
Frank Ocean – Seigfried 31.
Bizali – Lucile 32.
Frank Ocean – Nikes 33.
Labirinto – Mal Sacré 34.
SÂVER – Dissolve to Ashes 35.
Braveyoung – The Weight of Loss is Whole 36.
Vorvaň – Of Menace and Favour 37.
Frank Ocean – Ivy 38.
KIDS SEE GHOSTS – 4th Dimension 39.
Herod – Reckoning40.
Novallo – I Am 41.
Bizali – Round Three 42.
Mac Miller – 2009