Lance Skiiwalker is the newest signee to Hip Hop record label Top Dawg Entertainment, or TDE for short. This label is headed by Kendrick Lamar and Jay Rock and also has Ab-Soul, Schoolboy Q, and Isiah Rashad on their roster. All of those I just named are pretty great artists in their own unique way, each of them bring something different to the table that the others just don’t. Which is why I feel TDE is one of the best record labels in the business right now. They give their artists the liberty to forge their own musical identities, and it works greatly to the advantage of the artists, and the collective label. Which is why I was interested to hear what Lance Skiiwalker was going to offer on his first album after signing with TDE earlier this year. He has done some featured vocals for Schoolboy Q’s last album, which I enjoyed, although Lance didn’t really stand out to me there. I was optimistic because it’s TDE and the people at TDE generally have pretty high standards when it comes to quality control. How this one managed to slip by them though I have no idea because this album is not good.
This album is a formless and incoherent mess from start to finish. Sonically, the music has no structure whatsoever, and these beats are the musical equivalent of trying to hold sand in your hands. The mixing is so muddy, the low end most of the time completely dominates the track. And most of these tracks just lack any sort of rhythm to drive the songs which causes the songs to be very slow and boring. There isn’t anything to latch on to in these instrumentals, and you walk away remembering very little of this album because of it with the exception of some exceptionally bad lyrics that will either make you laugh, or make you furious. I will point out some positives though, the song “Sound” was probably the best track on this project. It had a nice funky jazz guitar melody that I did enjoy. “Speed” was also a decent track on here, it was very upbeat and “speedy.” It’s not a very good song though, and on a better album it probably would have been one of the worst songs, but on this album it is one of the best. The rest of these songs are completely structure-less and are not brought together at all by the concept of the album itself. There is a concept to this album, and it’s not unidentifiable, the concept is pretty clear. But the concept is so carelessly delivered that it doesn’t bring the album together, and as a result the whole thing feels disjointed and clunky.
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Now we have to talk about Skiiwalker’s performance on this album. No, it’s not good. I was not prepared for how bad this album was going to be. But I was really not prepared for how bad Lance Skiiwalker sounds on this project. On this album he sounds like Louis Armstrong on downers. If this is how he sings regularly, then he has to have better production than this. If he had brighter, grittier and jazzier production, then it could work. Lance has a low, deep, raspy voice; he sounds a lot like Schoolboy Q if he tried to sing. Which I can confirm as fact because Schoolboy Q actually had a featured verse where he does sing instead of rap, and I could barely tell the two apart. So while Lance’s singing isn’t good on this album, I’m not inclined to place too much blame on him because I feel like if he had better beats, he could put in a better performance.
In conclusion, this is not a good debut for Lance Skiiwalker at all. The lack of any kind of melody or rhythm in most of these instrumentals make this album a complete snooze. The songwriting is forgettable; I didn’t even talk about the lyrics in these songs. Lyrics go in one ear and out the other, except for the exceptionally bad lines that are present in some of these songs. Lance I feel like did try to put some effort in to his performance, but with some of these beats, he really didn’t have much to work with. The poor guy is stranded on this project and he doesn’t even sound that good to begin with. When this album isn’t offending my standards of good music, it is boring me to tears. This album just felt really thrown together and rushed. It was like they felt they had to put this album out the same year he signed to the label. Which I don’t understand because it isn’t like Lance Skiiwalker signing to TDE was huge news. This album wasn’t that highly anticipated. They could have taken their time and put a little more thought into his music than this. As it is, I’m feeling a very light 2/10 and absolutely no recommendation. Sorry the reviews have been so negative lately, I’ll try to review something better next week. Until then, enjoy your Thanksgiving, keep smiling, keeping living, and keep loving.
