Chesstown King's Reviews and Thoughts

  The latest offering from Tyler the Creator is really really good. In fact, I'd say its tied for his best album ever with Flower Boy. It's narrated loosely by DJ Drama you know "Gangsta Grillz" guy. I really like that Tyler went back to mostly rapping on these songs and the bars are pretty damn strong. The production tho, as usal with Tyler projects is the real star of the show. Songs like "Hot Wind Blows" and "Lemonhead" are definite highlights. "Sweet/I Thought You Wanted to Dance" is a near 10 minute track but its amazing. I love the beat there and the female vocals. His Mom has a skit and its pretty funny too. "Juggernaut" is another dope song. Overall its a very deep album with good replay value too. Not every song is stellar but most are. Tyler is really becoming one of the better current school rappers now along with the likes of Logic, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar. Lyrics 23 Beats 25 Depth 24 Tilt 23 Verdict 95

  This is the first Doja Cat album I've ever heard and I was very surprised by how good it is. She's really talented able to sing and rap with relative ease. Despite that this is categorized as a Pop album and not R&B which I find odd. The big single "Kiss Me More" is incredible. Doja and SZA really do there thing over the lush beat. Other songs on this album rarely disapoint too like "Need to Know" and "Love to Dream". The album gets off to a strong start with "Woman" too. The production is really good here. Overall its a solid album with few average songs but there are some. This really makes me want to listen to her previous albums.  Lyrics: 23 Beats: 23 Depth: 24 Tilt: 23 Verdict 93

This is DMX's posthumous album and for the most part I really like it. Sure there's a lot of guests, but most songs are pretty good. The first track "That's My Dog" features The Lox, Sheek Louch, and Swizz Beatz. The next track "Bath Salts" features strong verses from Jay and Nas, as well as DMX. The production of the album is pretty good but I feel it could have been a little better. "Money Money Money" with Moneybag Yo sounds really out of place. I'm not a big fan of Moneybag lol.  I actually liked the songs with Alicia Keys and Bono respectively. "Hood Blues" was another highlight. "Take Control" with Snoop Dogg was ok. The final song "Letter to My Son" which features Usher, is really sentimental. Overall I feel this is a decent album from DMX. Maybe not as great as a final album should of been but I'll take it. RIP DMX. Lyrics: 23 Beats: 21 Depth: 22 Tilt: 22 Verdict: 88

 Nicki rereleased her 2009 mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty with 5 unreleased songs. I was pretty hype to listen to this since I never heard the original mixtape. The new songs aren't bad. Of course the first track "Seeing Green" which features Drake and Lil Wayne is pretty good. I can't help but feel Nicki outshined them on it tho. On the old songs side; it's really good to hear a young and hungry Nicki. Songs like "Itty Bitty Piggy" are really hype. There's a lot of Gucci Mane up here too but he does pretty well on this. The "Best I Ever Had Remix" wasn't much to write home about. I enjoyed "Gotta Go Hard" which features the beat on the Kanye track "Go Hard". Overall its a pretty damn good listen and has me longing for music from the 2009-2010 era. It's hilarious when the Narrator says, "Damn son where'd you find that". lol. Lyrics 22 Beats 23 Depth 21 Tilt 24 Verdict 90

 J. Cole has finally returned after 3 years, and man I gotta admit I wasnt feeling this that much at first but it really grew on me! The album just might be Cole at his lyrical best....its hard to say. The production is pretty good too. The album gets off to a pretty good start with "95. south" which features some lines from an old Lil Jon song. You know how much I like Crunk music (or did like it). There's some other highlights too like "Pride is the Devil" which features a surprisingly good Lil Baby verse. He storytells pretty well on  "let. go. my. hand". The best track has got to be "the. climb. back" tho where he spits some really sharp bars. Overall this is a really good album from him. It's certainly better than his last outing. Here's to more music from one of rap's most consistent artists.  Lyrics 24 Beats 23 Depth 25 Tilt 24 Verdict 96

I recently beat Final Fantasy 7 Remake. It was an incredible game. No it wasn't perfect but it did so many things right. First off the graphics were truly amazing. The characters looked really realistic for the most part. The voice acting was also a stand out. Even NPCs have voice acting which is really cool. I really liked the main characters voices. I loved that you get to not just control Cloud in certain points of the game. Tifa, Barret, and Aerith are also controllable.  Of course no matter how the game looks and sounds it wouldn't be good without a great battle system. It's kind of like Final Fantasy 15's real time fighting combined with a turn based system. I really liked it. There were some encounters where I didn't have to really do anything, but most fights were tough enough to require me to stay on top of it. The Materia system is really cool, which came from the original game.  I ended up beating the game in about 36 hours. I did most of the side quests ...

 This is the first Jhene Aiko album I think I've reviewed. It's long as hell, this being the deluxe version. There's definitely some stand out tracks but there was quite a few that were monotonous. Nonetheless its a good album. Jhene has such a sexy voice. I swear it's hypnotizing. The production is pretty good and is the perfect backdrop for her singing. "Back on My B.S." and it's remix are really good. I actually prefer H.E.R.'s version to Kehlani's. "P**sy Fairy" is good too. "Tryna Smoke" is another great song were it has a good remix too. Jhene loves to talk about sex but hey it doesn't really get too old. I've got to listen to her other albums now. Lyrics 23 Beats 22 Depth 22 Tilt 21 Verdict: 88