1. The Arrival
2. High Off Life
3. The Dream Time Machine
4. Love Hard
5. Live & Learn
6. Brake
7. Teleport 2 Me, Jamie feat. Desire
8. Where Did You Sleep Last Night
9. Efflictim
10. The Upper Room

D.D.: 5/5
Montreal: 4.75/5
Outside: 4.5/5
XO / The Host: 5/5
Initiation: 5/5 (this is a crazed, insane, outrageous song. And the production style and The Weeknd’s delivery makes it sound as such. Beautiful)
Same Old Song: 4.25/5 (Lmfao at Juicy J at the end)
The Fall: 4.25/5
Next: 4.75/5
Echoes of Silence: 4/5

4.61/5  - Outstanding, best of the year, near perfect.

There’s something eerie about The Weeknd. He’s created this beautifully haunting aesthetic. Perhaps it’s his ambiguity, his rare appearances, his dark and daunting prouduction, and his straight-forward and violently blunt lyrics all create this amazing, atmospheric sound. After releasing two attention-worthy projects earlier in 2011 (House of Balloons and Thursday), The Weeknd capitalizes off of his features on OVOXO buddy, Drake’s, album “Take Care” and releases another episode in his series of dark lust. Abel Tesfaye is not your average singer, sure he sings to the ladies, but it’s not a serenade, it’s more like a commanding tongue-lashing. On nearly every song on Echoes Of Silence, he’s talking down to the females in his story. Even his choice of covering Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana” of all MJ songs shows where his mind is at. He doesn’t care about the females in his songs, he presents them as second-fiddle to his drugs and friends. What makes it interesting is that he tells these girls this in his songs, yet they accept it because are strangely addicted to him. Maybe serving as a metaphor of The Weeknd character’s addiction to drugs.

Stay tuned for his next release, his hype is building and he is about to change how R&B sounds. You don’t wanna be high for this.

-written by @troyisMAJOR

Dun: skit
Sleep: 3.75/5
Make My (featuring Big K.R.I.T. & Dice Raw): 3.75/5 (I know a lot of people are in love with this song, but its pretty boring, in my opinion)
One Time (featuring Phonte & Dice Raw): 4.75/5
Kool On (featuring Greg Porn & Truck North): 4/5
The OtherSide (featuring Bilal & Greg Porn): 5/5
Stomp (featuring Greg Porn & Just Blaze): 4.25/5
Lighthouse (featuring Dice Raw): 4.5/5
I Remember: 4.5/5
Tip the Scale (featuring Dice Raw): 5/5
Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou): -
Possibility (2nd Movement): -
Will to Power (3rd Movement): 5/5
Finality (4th Movement): -

Undun shares a lot of parallels to Jay-Z’s American Gangster – such as revealing as to why criminals are forced to do what they do to using samples of other audio (or in American Gangster’s case, movies) to help tell a story. Both stories also unravel very well.

This album is telling the story of how a man is driven towards crime…the twist is, it’s telling the story BACKWARDS. The thing is, the story unravels perfectly either way you listen to it. Then you listen to the last 4 tracks (the instrumentals) and it basically tells the story through instruments. You can play those back to front and get the same story too. Hence the album name “undun” (if you flip that word around and read it backwards, it reads the same.

Undun is successful in what it does as a concept album, and the music itself is up to par with the standard The Roots have set for themselves over the years. Black Thought brings the heat on the mic, the band provides great production, and every single feature on this album, from the hookmen to the rapping features play their part well. Enough can’t be said about this album, it plays extremely well from front to back (and from back to front). Go buy it, support good artists and one of the best groups in rap history.

4.45/5 - written by @troyisMAJOR

Based Is How You Feel Inside: 4/5
Fall In Love: 4.25/5
Improvised Jam: 4.5/5
Mass Appeal/Transmission: 5/5
I Got A Bad Feeling About This: skit
Salmonella: 3.25/5
The World Is Yours/Brooklyn Zoo: 4.25/5 (not good use of the piano loop on “The World Is Yours”)
Freedom/Billium Evans: 5/5
Listerosis: 4/5
Camel: 4/5(it’s hard to live up to the greatness that is Flying Lotus’ “Camel”)
Title Theme/Saria’s Song/Song Of Storms: 4.75/5
Outro/Glasper: 5/5

4.36/5 – BBNG’s choice of songs to cover greatly brought life to their instrumentation, solid picks.

-written by @troyisMAJOR

1. Waiting (Prod. By Lil Lody)
2. What I Do (Just Like That) (Prod. By Drumma Boy)
3. O.J. Ft. Jadakiss & Fabolous (Prod. By Lil Lody)
4. Nothing (Prod. By Lil Lody)
5. Way Too Gone (Prod. By Mike Will)
6. SupaFreak Ft. 2 Chainz (Prod. By D. Rich & Shawty Redd)
7. All We Do Ft. Trick Daddy (Prod. By Midnight Black)
8. Leave You Alone Ft. Ne-Yo (Prod. By Warren G)
9. Everythang (Prod. By Lil Lody)
10. Trapped Ft. Jill Scott (Prod. By J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League)
11. F.A.M.E. (Fake Ass Muthafuckas Envy ) Ft. T.I. (Prod. By J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League)
12. I Do Ft. Jay-Z x Andre 3000 (Prod. By M16)
13. Higher Learning Ft. Snoop Dogg, Devin The Dude & Mitchelle’l (Prod. By Lil C)
14. This One’s For You Ft. Freddie Gibbs (Prod. By Lil Lody)

BONUS :Talk 2 Me Ft. Freddie Gibbs x Eminem (Prod. By Drumma Boy & Travis Barker)

1. Ssuut x 2
2. Pocket Full Of Money
3. Roll Call (feat. G. Malone, Coniyac, Jay Rock, Mistah Fab)
4. Diamond In The Back (feat. K-Young)
5. Drum Murder (feat. Horseshoe G.A.N.G.)
6. No Competition
7. Goin Bad (feat. KeyAna)
8. Game Time (Bonus Track)

Over My Dead Body: 3.75/5
Shot For Me: 3.5/5
Headlines: 5/5
Crew Love (feat The Weeknd): 4.5/5
Take Care (feat Rihanna): 3/5 (the bridge with Gil Scott Heron is awesome though)
Marvin’s Room/Buried Alive Interlude: 4.75/5
Underground Kings: 4.75/5
We’ll Be Fine (feat Birdman): 3.25/5
Make Me Proud (feat Nicki Minaj):2.75/5 (Nicki Minaj ruins this song)
Lord Knows (feat Rick Ross): 4.75/5
Cameras/Good Ones Go Interlude (feat The Weeknd): 4.5/5 (this rating is subject to change)
Doing It Wrong (feat Stevie Wonder): 3.75/5
The Real Her (feat Lil Wayne & Andre 3000): 4.5/5
Look What You’ve Done: 4.25/5
HYFR (feat Lil Wayne): 4.5/5
Practice: 3.5/5
The Ride (feat The Weeknd): 5/5

There’s something different about Drake on Take Care. Sure, he keeps the same formula, low-pass filter beats, 40 beats (as well as some industry notables such as Lex Luger and Just Blaze). He’s still singing. He’s still bragging and rapping in his signature high-pitch. But something is definitely different - his demeanor. In Thank Me Later and So Far Gone, we hear a grateful Drake, thankful to be in the position that he’s at. We also hear Young Money influences all throughout, perhaps him paying homage to Wayne. On Take Care however, he’s rather vindictive. Even though he’s kept the same flavor, this album feels more aggressive. From the shots (seemingly) thrown at Big Sean on Over My Dead Body to him (uncharacteristically) defending his style of music on Lord Knows, Drake clearly had a different mindset going into this album. This is also evidenced by the fact that he’s without a doubt cursing more on this album, and not to add affect or emphasis, he’s just using swear words more loosely, especially the word “bitch”, which used to be a word that he rarely used. There’s more of a “I DON’T GIVE A ****” attitude here and you can view it as a good or bad thing, but personally, I like it. The guy who once said “Diss me and you’ll never hear a reply for it” is now putting his guards up and firing shots back at those who fire shots at him. Hell, even in his interview with Funkmaster Flex, he subtly called Pusha T a bitch and now he’s welcoming any challenges/beefs. This is without a doubt a new Drake.

A new Drake, but the same formula that has seemed to be working since SFG, although I get more of a DJ Screw feel on the production on this – these beats feel slower, he’s been referencing Houston a lot, so maybe the influence has rubbed off here. The Screwed-Up production has worked for Drake in the past though (see his song November 18th), then you add in a more aggressive Drake and The Weeknd harmonizing throughout and you get near perfect songs like The Ride. The mesh works beautifully. Headlines captures Drake’s demeanor throughout this album pretty accurately, the first two bars are all you’d need to hear to see where Drake’s mind is at:

“I might be too strung out on compliments, overdosed on confidence/
Started not to give a fuck and stopped fearing the consequence/”

To add more flavor and cockyness/confidence (however you look at it) Drake adds:

“Drinking every night because we drink to my accomplishments/
Faded way too long, I’m floatin’ in and out of consciousness/
And they saying I’m back, I agree with that/
I just take my time with all this shit, I still believe in that/
I had someone tell me I fell off, ooh I needed that/”

Perhaps this change in attitude is due to the fact that Drake has been smoking and consuming more “lean” (as he details in his song “Trust Issues”). In the midst of the slowed down beats and braggadocio though, Drake does manage to stick to his SFG-roots with humbling songs like Marvin’s Room where he begs an ex-girlfriend to come back to him andDoing It Wrong where, before Stevie Wonder’s standout performance with the harmonica, Drake fights the feelings of whether to comfort an ex-girlfriend or move on. SFG-Drake is still here, it’s just that in between those tracks, we can hear a more aware Drake that seems to have lost regard for what people who are not in his circle think about him.

There is also less Young Money influence in this album. In Thank Me Later, Drake struggled to rap through songs as he tagged along with Wayne in using the “Supa Dupa Flow” (a perfect example of this is the song “Over”, a complete lyrical disaster where Drake sounds completely out of place). Although there are more features from Young Money artists here than on Thank Me Later, there is less of an influence in how the album sounds because of it – meaning you don’t hear a beat like “Fancy” (a beat that Drake himself said he wouldn’t normally rap on) and you don’t hear Drake trying to force punchlines. I get the feel that Drake had more control, if not complete control over this album. It sounds much more polished than Thank Me Later. Though you do hear some random features – one from Compton native Kendrick Lamar who raps the Buried Alive Interlude in which he uses death as a metaphor for fame and paints a vivid metaphorical image
of his relationship with Drake (which can be dated back to The Kendrick Lamar EP where Kendrick took a slight shot at Drake on his song “Determined“, which Kendrick addresses). Another by Andre 3000 – but really, who’s complaining when Andre’s rapping?

Through and through this a very well put together, polished album. Drake clears his mind on this and gets some fitting production largely from his longtime friend 40 and producer T-Minus. There are a number of features, but none hurt the overall sequence of the album. Drake’s new ally The Weeknd also gets his shine on this album, credited for singing on/writing for and/or helped produce a total of 5 tracks on this album. You can say that this is his parallel to Frank Ocean on Watch The Throne – both of them were unknowns last year, now they’re on two of the biggest albums of 2011. But I digress, this is a very good album. It sounds to me like this is exactly what Drake wanted it to sound like, and it sounds great. I’d recommend it to current Drake fans and newcomers alike. Take care.

4.11/6

-written by @troyisMAJOR

” Eminem and Yelawolf on poking fun at their race:

Eminem, what advice do you offer, if any, on being scrutinized for being a white rapper. Do you guys ever talk about race in that way? 

Eminem: We make jokes about it, but I don’t think we talk about it in depth. As I was listening to his music, I am not even thinking about any of that shit. It’s just the music. That’s one of the things that’s great about it. I’m not even thinking about it when I hear the music.

Yelawolf: We do poke fun of it because it’s funny. Like, he calls me White Dog.

“It wasn’t meant to be a shot at the five rappers that I love,” he says. “I’ve never even sat down and pieced together a top five before. I just feel like I’m really good right now. And I’ve never felt like that before. I’ve always felt reluctant to say anything like that, but I’m very confident in these new raps that I’m about to give the world.”

“They nitpick at everything,” he says, shaking his head. “I can’t do anything. All they want me to do is dress so they can make fun of me. Otherwise, it’s hard for them. I don’t give people many reasons to dislike me. They have to find shit. They’re like, ‘Aw man, sweaters! He wears sweaters too much.’ Like, what?”