Admittedly, I've never truly gotten into Curren$y as heavily as I'd thought I might. Don't get me wrong he's always interested me, being a former huge Wiz fan obviously you couldn't NOT hear a track with the two every now and then, but I never looked into him as much as I thought I would. Well, until now that is. One thing I am aware of with Curren$y is how hard he works to constantly put out music, and that's a pretty good reason to be a fan. It seems you're always getting new material. A 7 track mix tape seems the perfect introduction to someone fairly new to a rapper as I am to him, so what is there to lose? Curren$y you sly dog you.
The intro on More Saturday Night Car Tunes is something I admit I haven't heard anything quite like before. Simply named "Intro", this song comes with almost a zapping form of production from constant hit maker Cardo. If you've heard of Cardo before it's probably because of his production on a good selection of Joe Budden and Slaughterhouse songs, I also happened to feature him in my "5 Producers You Should Know" article a while back. Anyways, back to Curren$y. The weirdest thing about this song is he doesn't rap over it at all, and you wish he would. He pretty much just talks over the beat, and even has a point where he says "I know a couple mother fuckers new to this shit, thought I was about to rap. A lot of us already know that I had, like, 5 more tracks to that." He goes on to mention tweeting the producer of the song, Cardo, and almost prepares the listeners for what they're about to experience it seems. The crazy part about it is when listening to just the music portion of the beat, this intro is actually good. I have to say I've never seen this done before, but it fits, knowing Curren$y and how "chill" of a vibe he wishes to create for the listeners.
"Champaign Reign" is built around a piano based beat (don't worry, he actually raps in this song) that surprised me because of what seems like at first a lack of drums. Of course I figured out shortly after putting on headphones that this song doesn't contain real drums, but some wavy sounding 808s that add a nice vibe to the song. The next cut, "Countin Money" ft. Wiz Khalifa seems like the first real dose of music on the mix tape, and it doesn't disappoint. Wiz lays down a typical Wiz verse, flexing about his money and weed intake as usual, but what got me jigging a bit was the catchy hook Curren$y lays down.
"Money Shot" is the perfect mixture between Mac Miller and Curren$y's conflicting rap styles. Mac's verse contains the usual entertaining, keep you on your toes type of verse. It's decent, but definitely seems that he's holding back a bit considering the song and the style. Mac's usual raps are filled with a different lyrical style and picture painting capabilities, but he slows himself down, almost seemingly taking meds on this track, and part of the slow down seems to be the slow, somewhat jazzy instrumental holding Mac back. Curren$y sounds as good on this track as you'd like him to sound, to quote some lyrics in the song, he's almost "comfortably dressed" in the instrumental. My favorite part of the song is the last 10 seconds, where the beat slows down into this other worldly place with a really cool ending hook to finish.
If there's any song on this tape that actually surprised me a bit, it had to be "Drug Prescription". You expect a lot different from Curren$y, but this is a very cool change of pace. I've never heard of any sort of story telling ability from the New Orleans rapper, but this track proceeded to open my eyes a bit. He actually goes at other industry rappers a little, with lines like "these other rappers out ain't half as sick, all that half ass shit will get your whole ass whipped." This is certainly a surprise to me, a guy who got used to song types from Curren$y like "Rollin Up" with Wiz Khalifa, and their joint mix tape Live In Concert, all strictly weed mixes. It's always a great thing to see the competitive aspect of the game live in a rapper and show through his music, even if it's only every now and then.
So Curren$y is certainly a talented act to tune into, and More Saturday Night Car Tunes is just another example of why. What this tape opened me up to is Curren$y's great rapping ability mixed with a desire to make great music. It's hard to find rappers with the mix of both types of music, and while Curren$y prefers and certainly shines on calming, chill, bumping car tunes that he usually makes, you definitely better not mistake him for a rapper that has no lyrical content. For some reason I can't get past the "Saturday night cartoons" way of hearing the title of the tape (Wabbit season! Duck season! You know what, never mind.) But anyways, I personally would love to see a K.R.I.T and Curren$y collaboration, hopefully some time in the future. Yes ladies and gents, this is me giving the okay to put Curren$y's tape in the CD player, or tape deck if you're going old school, and just riiiiiide out.
No comments:
Post a Comment