After 'retiring' in 2020 with the album No Pressure, Maryland MC Logic is back again, despite dropping last year, with his debut independent album College Park.
College Park is Logic's time-warp to his younger days of being on the grind as an MC, trying to make it and chase fame and status whilst also having fun with his pals along the way. College Park is a concept album which takes you back to 2011 through song and skit and holds your hand through an 'average day in the life' of Logic and his closest buddies, on a day where he is to play a show. The day starts with Logic being woken up by his friends and throughout the day we are with them on various escapades that normal friendship groups go on, going to a drive through, going to the shop for some snacks (which ends up getting robbed whilst they're there), freestyling in the car with eachother, smoking bud together and ultimately, at the end of the album, they arrive at their destination, which is the gig where Logic plays a show. The album finishes with their farewells to one another rounding off the day. This is executed through skits at the end of most songs, inflating the overall album time to 67 minutes, I would hazard a guess that actual music takes up about 55 minutes of the run time?
Although the skits are tedious and unfunny, I enjoyed Logic being back on a concept type of album after his previous 2 projects were solely "rapping just to rap", and although they did have their merits, Logic pushing his pen with a more narrative state of mind was certainly fresh and made for a more intriguing listen. Some of the skits were quite corny, but realistically, they're not actors, and the dialogue felt quite similar to that of Kid Cudi's 'Entergalactic' movie which again felt like the conversations were forced, although I love that movie for its style and soundtrack it must be said. One other pet-peeve of the skits was them being at the end of songs and not as their own track on the listing, it just makes them harder to put on playlists when you wanna listen to the song but not the skit, it's kind of annoying if you're in the shower for example and you listen to the song for 3 minutes but then there's a 2 minute skit at the end which you have to listen to, even if you don't want to. But apart from those little niggles, the concept was fairly fresh and I liked that Logic was trying something riskier with his lyricism.
The opening track Cruisin' Through the Universe plays as a bizarre, dream-like song with different voice effects and spacey production, and is I guess meant to come off quite psychedelic and a track inside Logic's head whilst he sleeps rather than anything in reality. In the skit at the end, when Logic is woken up by his friend, he remarks "Yo Lenny, I had the weirdest fuckin' dream... Yo, I was on a song with the fuckin' RZA", to which Lenbo says back to him "hey, you know what would be really crazy, if you got the whole clan on a song one day" *wink,wink, of course alluding to Wu-Tang Forever from his 2018 album YSIV. This was a cool way to start the LP and helped to paint the concept in your mind. I just think the RZA feature was kind of random and the track just sits on top of the album and you kind of forget about it quite quickly unfortunately, it sort of just sits there existing without leaving any lasting impression.
The transition into Wake Up was smooth and that beat goes hard with those almost siren sounds with Logics repetitive vocals of "everyday I wake up" gradually come in nicely, and comes off like the song is intended to wake up the listener. Logic floats nicely spitting some decent flows and decent lyrics, I like the bar "I ain't talkin' material, talkin' about my material,
this shit that I'm writin', the shit that I been through".
Lightsabers, Clone Wars III, and Redpill VII, are all solid tracks making for a decent start to the album. Lightsabers begins with a tepid trap beat with Logic doing his typical skippy flow that sounds pretty smooth and the hook follows a similar pattern, the beat switches to something more interesting and slower for the second part where the drums and instrumental feel way more 'produced' and 'live'. However, the sentiment of the song doesn't take much of a direction and Logic crams so many different sections into this track it can get a bit messy, there's even this bit where Logic is arguing with, I guess, a voice in his head - what about though I'm not 100% sure? Throughout the song, Logic tells the listener, or maybe himself in this case, to "come get some money", but then also instructs "don't do it for the money", before coming to the conclusion in verse 2 that he did do it for the money but there's nothing wrong with that. This wrestling between keeping it real and 100% Hip Hop vs the justification of making commercial music to feed himself and his family is something that infiltrates Logic's music all too often, and I still don't know if Logic has come to terms with a) what kind of artist he wants to be, and b) if he's 100% satisfied with the decisions he has made in the past in terms of his, I guess, commercial trajectory.
Clone Wars III sees Logic touch upon criticism previously laid at his door around plagiarism, referencing how he used to wish he was J.Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z and Lupe Fiasco, until now he has realised that; they will never be him, he is totally unique as a person and artist. For me, I was just disappointed this is something Logic has only just come to terms with and just plays into that point-above about being unsure of himself. Redpill VII is a pure-bars song with clever rhyme schemes, touches of wordplay and solid flows and a cool beat-switch in there to keep the track interesting, Logic touches on a variety of subjects going wherever his mind takes him. It's a pretty cool song and definitely one of the strongest on the tracklist. However, the quality picks up hugely with the song Playwright featuring Andy Hull. The beat is really soothing with steady, peaceful drums with light, jazzy keys and plenty of relaxing atmosphere. The hook is awesome and when Logic raps it alongside Andy Hull it makes for a great moment, and also, Andy Hull's closing verse is super-nice. I love Logic's care-free flow and empowering content matter in his verse, shouting out both OutKast and A Tribe Called Quest, a standout bar being - "This that 'midnight marauder' shit, flow seamless over the beat, it's kind of like a partnership". Props to Andy Hull for contributing his amazing vocals and props to Logic for making a beautiful song, at just 2 minutes in length I was sad when it ended.
Gaithersburg Freestyle follows with a way higher-energy and tempo, but for me I just didn't jell with the verses or the beat unfortunately. Insipio is a tight little song where Logic once again discusses the lack of satisfaction in material things in life, spitting the personal bars "I've done some slippery things for change, but I made 30 million and my life changed, finally found happiness when my wife changed". For me though, the tracklist picks up once more with Self Medication. The ever-charismatic Redman delivers a fire verse, the boom-bap beat is full of flavour with startling strings, cool samples and beat scratches, it just sounded really full and fun. Logic's verse is tight, but a highlight for me was Seth Macfarlane (yes Seth Macfarlane) taking us home with Lucy Rose, with his Sinatra-inspired vocals, which of course are also used in his show Family Guy when the character Brian Griffin sings on swing and jazz songs. The track gave me a lot of nostalgia and rounded of a good song.
Shimmy featuring Joey Bada$$ follows up with the heavy sample of Ol' Dirty Bastard's classic song Shimmy Shimmy Ya. I do not like this track at all. The beat itself sounds much darker than the original track it's sampling. I don't like the actual interpolation of the sample either, it's kind of not really there and apart from when Logic interpolates the lyrics into his hook, you might not even notice the sample at all. I'm not sure what the track adds at all to the album, nor do I think Joey provides anything to write home about either, his verse is kind of a non-flow verse, and neither rapper brings their best in terms of lyrics either, just a regular braggadocios track that's irrelevant to Logic's over-arching narrative. Not every track ties into the concept of the album, but if the track itself is mediocre it's way less forgivable. Maybe with a different sample and crisper drums there could be something to this song, but yeah it's definitely a skip in my opinion. I would never listen to this over odb's classic as it has 0% of the fun, quality or charisma that it clearly wants to draw from.
The song to follow up Shimmy is the brilliant Paradise II featuring Norah Jones. The clever bassline creates a cool, jazzy instrumental and Logic spits a nice verse, spitting game about the industry and its perils, as well as informing us that he's now more self-assured in his content and the reasons for his artistry, "used to do it how they did it, because I thought that's how you did it, now I do it because I love it". Norah Jones' shaggy, rich vocals take the song home and really cap-off another one of the highlights of the project.
Following the skit where Logic is peer pressured by his mates into smoking a joint, we have the playful and childish Highlife, an attempt at a stoner anthem, but realistically, feels way too on-the-nose to achieve that status (not that I'm the gatekeeper of that sub-genre). The vocals and cadences didn't really stick for what it was attempting, but I did enjoy Logic's autotuned vocals at the end of verse 3. Perhaps the track will hit nicer in the summer, despite the overly surface-level lyrics.
Come on Down plays as a regular trap banger but finishes with some nice floaty female vocals from Lucy Rose on the outro that I enjoyed and some closing words from Lil Keke. Logic's verse was interesting, discussing his tough childhood, the dangerous and difficult circumstances he had to navigate, such as "I sold crack like white yolk, police they got me walking on a tightrope". His verse ties into the words we here from Lil Keke at the end, as he dispels any illusions about people who have to do these gruesome things in the streets, alluding to the idea that they have to be done to survive, rather than out of any enjoyment, and tragically, and ultimately, conclude in death.
38.9897 (the song with the coordinates name) was pretty good with C Dot Castro owning this track as he flowed incredibly smooth, completely immersing himself within the beat and showed himself to be a real technician. Logic's and Lenbo's verses were much shorter and less interesting.
Lightyear, the closing track has a promising start, spitting over a boom-bap beat with a blurry vocal sample in the background and interesting drums where Logic discusses how he won't be changing with fame or even ever rap on a melodic, radio style song. After a short interlude, Logic contradicts this by explaining and justifying why he did infact 'go pop'. Explaining that it wasn't just for the money but was also to spread a message that was "deeper than rap", likely referring to his suicide-awareness song 1-800-283-8255 from his Everybody days where Logic reached his mainstream peak. The problem I have with this, we've heard these discussions from Logic not only on previous albums, on previous songs on this album, meaning it's unoriginal and not even that interesting anymore. I see both sides of the argument for going mainstream and not going mainstream, and I think both are completely valid in their own ways. So with that in mind, it doesn't really matter. I think Logic should just accept that he did 'go pop', he's never going to be this underground Hip Hop vigilante he may want to be or wished he was, and just move on. This constant discourse of his own career is holding back his content and he just needs to move freely, without giving a fuck whether he's making commercial music or not.
The beat switch, which involved a jazz sample that was instantly recognisable from Kendrick Lamar's 2011 song Rigamortus from Section.80 was fun, and Logic steps up his bars, flow and intensity on this section of the beat - the sample is another nod to the 2011 days in which the album centres around. My final comment is around the closing skit, in which Logic admits (in 2011 this is) to being unsure of his future artistry. He sees rap as a "foot in the door" but doesn't want to be boxed in as just a rapper!? This confuses me. The impression I got from this album and others, was Logic is all about Hip Hop, he's all in. His last few projects were "rapping just to rap", and on the skit on the prior song to this one, he says to the fictitious crowd, "I love Hip Hop". Now, in 2011, at the level of fame that he was at, the success and experience he'd only just started to receive, why would you already be worried about doing stuff other than Hip Hop? Not even that - you're worried that when you do make it, you will only ever be considered a rapper and your fans won't want you to do anything else. I just realistically don't see how that's what Logic would have been thinking about at that time, on top of the fact that he is this staunch Hip Hop-head who's all in on the craft. Anyway after expressing, through skit, that he has interests in singing and playing the guitar, the album closes out with an acoustic track that is being sung from the perspective of the here and now, Logic in 2023, plucking the riffs. It makes the skit feel shoe-horned in to justify any stylistic changes he's about to make right now, not in 2011. The truth is, he doesn't need to justify it, if he wants to sing and play guitar, just do it and see what happens. And as for the singing, it sounds okay, but in the end he starts rhyming anyway and it sounds like he's rapping but with more melody, suggesting he doesn't necessarily fully trust his singing ability.
It'll be interesting to see what Logic does from here, if he carries on down the path of singing and guitar, if he pushes on with just Hip Hop or if he blends both together, who knows? I just want Logic to feel fulfilled, clear, and happy with his decisions. There's some fucking great songs on College Park, and between the very mediocre and boring skits, Logic successfully gives you a feel for his come-up, the grind that he was on, and also the camaraderie he shared with his friends.
Art work opinions?
Yeah really good, matches the theme very well and is a pretty cold picture.
Where would I listen to this album?
This probably works best on public transport where you can follow the concept and themes easily. Unfortunately, the skits mean the album cannot really be played in a group situation or as back-ground music, even though some of the songs themselves would work really well for that.
Star Track - Playwright
6/10
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