Royal Entrance

If you aren't into hip hop, you are living in the old culture my fellow consumer.  Rock and Roll is pretty much dead by age alone.  It's been through all the ages and now its just lingering on popularity.  The only thing that can save Rock is lyrics since not everything has been said YET.  But guitars have been shredded on for sixty years now and all the strings have been busted.  The necks warped and I'm tired of hearing chords.  What could save me from the four piece rock bands?  Oh yeah, Hip Hop or Rap or Black Music or whatever you want to classify it.  Hip Hop is still relatively young, fresh, and is actually blowing up from the internet like electronic music.
 

 Rock bands, or bands in general either put out live boring sets of their most popular songs or just albums.  Hip Hop does things a little different.  Artists can just put out one track.  Or they can do remixes.  Or they can put out mix tapes or collaborations or pretty much anything.  Since Rock is old, it is already defined.  What would a rock mixtape even sound like?  Probably boredom.  A lot of rappers put out there music for free for fans or for publicity.  Who cares right?  It's free and usually great.

Completely Free

Take the new mix tape dropped by Childish Gambino titled "R O Y A L T Y."  Well it's not an actual mix tape since the artist gets to define the product he is making.  It's a project.  I've been listening to this tape non stop for about a week.  Is it good?  Yes.  Is it great?  Yes.

Before going into why it is so good and so great let me just fill you in on Childish Gambino.  You have probably seen him before.  You know Troy from Community?  The only black kid in the group.  Well that's Danny Glover or Childish Gambino.  Danny used to write for 30 Rock.  Danny has been rapping since 05 and putting out his music for free ever since.  He is also in a few movies as well.  He got his name from a Wu Tang name generator and has many monikers that play off of Childish, Gambino, Danny and Glover.  His humor in these shows comes out in his music by making a lot of puns, pop culture references and play on words.

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This is good because it's bumping.  It has a wide variety of songs from slow to fast to sad to happy to narrative to flashy.  The productions are completely amazing for this thing being free.  Childish also does his own productions on songs and needless to say, he's good at it.  His wit is charmful, mature, and also present.  Instead of listening to other artists who are just trying to keep up with popular culture and the internet, Childish is pretty much as close to present as you can be.  He talks about the internet, blogs, skype, meme's, and the real world.  He is also really good at changing his voice slightly, have different flows or rhythmns in a song and following the productions perfectly.  He is definetely progressing as an artist unlike others that just stick to what they are good at or stay on a plateau.  I've skimmed through his collection and it's been picking up through quality steadily.  This is a major release for him.

Also this is good because he works with very respected people in the Hip Hop "game" and also musicians in general.  He works with Bun-B.  He works with GZA and Ghostface Killah.  He has Tina Fey on a song.  But unlike other artists who hold a lot of cameos on their tracks, Childish owns up and takes over usually every song.  It's nice because each artist will have their own productions on the track and I know Childish makes his productions for himself.

This is great because of the productions.  Astounding.  He fucking worked with Beck on two songs and Beck actually "raps" on one.  He samples the song from Drive, he samples TOXIC from Britney spears and he samples The Original Zelda.  They are just placed on a drum beat but actually torn apart, glitched, and screwed to make these songs into a new song.  It's astounding.  Danny Brown is on a track and is probably the only artist to beat Childish on a track.  Bitches want my boner/ I'll take her round the corner and give her a bonus, Bitches love a bonus.

The project mix tape whatever hold onto what is presently popular in hip hop and pretty much conquers/ makes fun of it.  People argue if Childish is serious or not but it's pretty easy to say that he is serious on taking over the rap "game."  He might actually want to change it and this tape shows that he can do what everyone else can but better.  He throws around sexy imagery like Kayne, word play like 2 chains, street like every other rapper but also talks like he is a manager or in charge.  There is no doubt in his voice, no doubt in his lyrics, or him yelling into the microphone.  He "Ain't fucking round!"

Pros
-Variety
-Great Productions
-Great Crew
-Subject matter is new, talking about the differences between old culture (old money) and new culture and new money.
-Funny or Real.  Hard to say there is a difference but Childish has been in comedy and knows how to point out things.  But since rap is his passion, he actually is taking no bets and talks about himself and his story a lot which is nice.  I don't care about the streets, I want to here how you dealt with it and personal stuff other then them just being a location to commercialize on.
Cons
-Not a fan of singing on hip hop tracks like Drake.  I like hip hop, not RnB boy.

If anyone listens to this and wants to discuss individual tracks, lyrics, meanings, or anything.  Please let me know in the comments.  Very interested.