Corn-ception shall be answered
KatteloxThe Evils of Lucy: Friday Night Trouble Bound (playlist) (story)Eminem – Farewell
Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah – Lake Shore Drive
Kendrick Lamar – For Sale?
D12 – Purple Pills
Eminem – Lock it Up
Kendrick Lamar – u
Eminem – Framed
Eminem – Bad HusbandFirst Impression - Heartwarming and full of good feelings and happiness...Faith in humanity restored.Hehehehe, yeah, this EP is definitely not happy. At any rate I feel like I've been Stockholm Syndromed.... I like this way more than I should and way more than anyone has a right too. What does that mean? I don't know, I'm pretty sure my brain was scrambled by this. I'm not even sure where to start or even how to articulate why I enjoy this or how I enjoy this. Meh, let's just get started....
Let's get one thing out of the way right off the bat. I could do with less vulgar language. I mean, I get it. The subject matter kind of calls for it. I will talk more about the story separately. At any rate, the first track Farewell has a fairly catchy chorus and some pretty decent verses and a nice cadence to it. I've always liked Eminem's rapping style and skills and this song is no exception. I mean, I've definitely heard better from him. I'm curious as to why this album has such low scores on RYM, is the rest of the album that terrible? Is there some vendetta against Eminem these days? I'm genuinely curious. This song then transitions in to perhaps the oddest inclusion of a song in any EP I've ever received. But here's the thing, the more I listened to this EP, the more I realized this song is a necessary inclusion. I really started to enjoy the song too. Is this song really supposed to be about dropping acid? Or is it just about a road called Lake Shore Drive? Interesting side note, there is a road in Lake Tahoe area called Lake Shore Drive. There's a lot of extremely large, fancy, homes that I do work at frequently. Now on to the first Kendrick Lamar song, For Sale?. The two Kendrick Lamar songs on this EP are the best Kendrick songs I have ever heard. I listened to the whole Damn. album and was pretty meh on the whole thing. I've heard a few other songs from the album this is from and didn't like them. OK, real talk, I think Kendrick Lamar is a pretty mediocre rapper and his skills both lyrically and cadence and tone and flow pale in comparison to many other Hip Hop artists that I like, including Eminem. Now, having said that, I always like the music and beats he uses in his songs. They are always creative. This song is no exception (granted this is more like a dream pop song). He also does some interesting things with his voice occasionally that kind of helps with getting into "character". Now moving on to Purple Pills, this is the Eminem that I really enjoy. Yes, I know this is D12, but really D12 is nothing without Eminem. Not much else to say about this song until I talk about the story. I'm not too big on Bizarre's parts, meh... Lock it up is next and I gotta say I think I like Anderson .paak's parts the most. He kind of has a bit of a Bone Thugs N Harmony tone to his style. I love me some old school Bone Thugs. Ok, next is u, no not you, u. Heh heh heh. OK, sometimes I feel like Kendrick is trying too hard and I end up not taking him seriously. This song could be amazing, but his style always hinders my enjoyment. But, my god, is the underlying music and all the backing vocals amazing. Uhhhgggg, I want to like Kendrick Lamar, but the problem is, Kendrick! He also falls in to some Lil Wayne-esque levels of bad rhyming/lyrics/flow at parts. Seriously Lil Wayne is the worst. The transition from here to Framed is the only transition I have a problem with. It could have done with a touch of editing. Now Framed has an extremely catchy chorus that was constantly getting stuck in my head. I don't like some of the staccato style rhythms, but they don't detract too much. It's a pretty decent song. The final song Bad Husband is kind of the Magnum Opus of the EP. There are problems with the song, for sure, but the sentiment and the backing vocals make up for a lot of the issues. Eminem gets stuck in some weird cadences in a few spots that I feel he should have gone back to the drawing board on. Oh well, the song is good and probably the best on the EP.
Now, song quality is a bit hard to quantify here. There are clearly songs I like better and none are particularly bad, but at the same time I don't think I would return to any of these songs on an individual basis, with the exception of maybe a couple of the Eminem songs. This is tough to score.... (3.9/10)............Just kidding
(7.9/10)The story is good. Really really good. I'm surprised how well this works. I know originally you wanted to put For Free on the EP, which might have worked storywise, but fortunately for you I banned it, because it would have tanked your song quality score. I'm also not sure how it would have fit storywise. Anyway I digress, what you did with the EP as far as story goes is amazing, even though it's depressing as all hell.
(9/10)The flow is about 80% there. There was a slight hiccup in a transition or two. I want to ding you for including the Lake Shore Drive song, but I just can't. The story even flows nicely.
(4/5)I will probably return to this EP from time to time. It's a dumpster fire as far as being a mood lifter, but it's an excellent example of story telling using disparate parts. Pretty amazing job.
Overall Score (20.9/25)