Some of the Most Prominent Mixtapes of the Year, Reviewed

We’re a quarter of the way through 2013 and it’s already been a pretty rad (and weird) year for rap. For those of y'all who like rap but also have other shit to do than spend a lot of time listening to this shit and analyzing it, here are some short reviews. Everything has also been reviewed in Polo horses because everyone loves Polo.

It’s a pretty arbitary slice of music and I left a lot of good and notable tapes out. Feel free to add your own in the comments!

Kevin Gates - The Luca Brasi Story

Kevin Gates is about as fully-formed as pre-breakout rappers get (even though he’s been a hero in Baton Rouge for years and has been kicking around the industry for a minute). Gates is in the same lane as Z-Ro and Future, pairing really good street raps with soulful crooning, although he's not quite as grim as Ro and not quite as #based as Future. Luca Brasi is a great record and you should go check out it right now. I don’t even have any jokes. Go listen to this shit.

Future Presents: FBG - The Movie

Ostensibly FBG: The Movie is an introduction to Freebandz Gang, but it’s really just a showcase for how easily Future can come up with 20 spectacular, radio-ready hooks. Aside from that, there’s Young Scooter’s mournful “Appeal” and Casino’s verse on “Keep On Shining” where he sounds like an earlier version of Future that wasn’t ready for the market. Bonus: there’s an interlude from Dungeon Family spirit guide Big Rube and, for some reason, a Sisqo feature.

Young Thug - 1017 Thug

This sounds like a reach but Young Thug is really the ODB of weird Atlanta rap, in that he has Big Baby Jesus’s “How did he make that work??” steelo down pat. His ability to make his un-autotuned warble raps into something really catchy on “Picacho” and “Dead For Real” is uncanny. He’s actually tightened up a bit since his last tape (I Came From Nothing 3) and with the Brick Squad cosign there’s some decent Gucci Mane features here too. And, as always, his name is still like a joke about rap names.

Antwon - Dark Denim

Antwon is the least challenging dude in the burgeoning wave of Mishka-clad goth-rappers (sorry) making moves. He raps about sex a lot but unlike most rappers he actually raps like he’s had sex before. But there’s also something special about Dark Denim, in that listening to it front to back reminds me of listening to West Coast underground rap CDs all the way through back when “underground rap CDs” were kind of hard to get, especially from the West Coast. It’s very cohesive. Two sex-zombie thumbs up.

Yelawolf - Trunk Muzik Returns

Look, this tape isn’t really that good but anything is better than the two fucking terrible albums of outdated radio rap that Yelawolf made for Shady/Interscope. He spends about half of Returns apologizing for that shit and he grew a giant beard, presumably to distinguish himself from MGK (who I like, but not as much). The original Trunk Muzik was so incredible that any indication that we might get the old Yela back is great. This is the rap game version of giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for merely not being George W. Bush.

UZ - Balltrap Muzic Vol. 1

It’s easy to get bogged down in the inherent appropriation of the term, so it’s good to highlight any reason to be optimistic about the genre itself not getting too far from the father to its style. Hearing the likes of Trae and Problem spit bars over UZ beats is a good reminder that aside from being the latest EDM trend for teenagers, a lot of rappers really fuck with “trap” producers. After all, they’re basically just picking up where Bangladesh and Polow left off.

Bangladesh - Ponzi Scheme

Speaking of Bangladesh, this tape is 30 tracks long and 13 of them are skits about “gold diggin' bitches.” Somebody give this man a hug.

OJ da Juiceman - Juice World 2

No OJ Da Juiceman tape is all that far from Juice just goin', "JUICE MADE A MIXTAPE (AYE!) JUICE MAKE A MIXTAPE (OKAY!)" over a Zaytoven beat and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Also Gorilla Zoe has a line about cooking crack in a crock pot.

Skinny Friedman is in constant fear that his jokes aren't hitting. He's on Twitter - @skinny412