I hesitate to praise Calldrops because Kodak, but I think it's one of the most interesting and affecting experiments on the record.
If he would have made a straightforward, no-frills trap record, he probably would have been rated higher. The last YoungBoy NBA got a 6.9. BlocBoy JB got a 7.7 (hahahaha). Being ambitious rarely pays off on Pitchfork unless you're Kendrick.
Really thought this album would have gotten better critical reviews, I feel like this is the sort of album critics would have wanted to hear this year. To me it incorporates a lot of the modern sounds as well as new sounds and is experimental enough to be familar, while still sounding good and pushing the boundaries of what's trendy right now. Either way I for one appreciate the sounds of this album in light of how oversaturated trap rap is right now
yeah, but you forget how buzzy that record was then and how everywhere it was. That was THE album for like the first half of that year Yeah, retroactively it’s not great but you need to remember scores are the product of the buzz and environment at that time and looking back it makes a lot of sense why it got that high
i think the critical problem with this is that there really isn't much personality on this record. a lot of the big rap records critically these days really have that
i think the personality on this record is distinctly rocky, i think the album is wildly inconsistent though and the good tracks are kind of scattered throughout and you have to dig for them.
It probably doesn't help that it came out the same day as Pusha T, who does almost the complete opposite of what this record does with a tight tracklist and pretty much no frills rap
I'm gonna be honest I ended up falling asleep the first time going through this but I had started it late at night so I'll blame it more on that, I gotta give a full go during the day
This album is pretty great from beginning to end imo. Tonally, it's a very warm atmospheric album despite jarring rhythmic shifts that occur throughout the songs. Layers of texture and movement unveil themselves constantly- yet it all feels easy to vibe to. I don't care for scores but 6.7 is just plain silly.
BlocBoy is fine. He's just pretty middle-of-the-road as far as I'm concerned. Fun but unexciting. Probably shouldn't have laughed but I just thought that the score was inflated considering this record. From all the reviews I've read, Pitchfork rewards rap projects for being consistent even if it's monotonous in the end. Making a messy but ambitious record is a good way to lose them because it's not just Metro Boomin' or Zaytoven for an hour.