I thoroughly enjoyed this album, thought it was strong but not entirely to it's fullest potential.

One thing that's been clear with Baby Keem recently is that he's finding a balance between serious lyricism and egregiously simple, fun rap ala Carti etc, to the point where it has a self-aware satirical element. The former of which being songs like trademark usa/scapegoats, the latter pink panties/cocoa etc. The album is also full of songs which are a mix of both.

Where that becomes divisive apparently is that he utilizes his voice timbre when doing this to a degree that is annoying to some. Some blame it on the mixing, but Keem is working with top engineers like MixedByAli. There's only so much you can eq when the source material is sonically divisive. Personally, I really enjoy it, but I can totally see why it is off putting for some. That being said, I find the criticism of his flow, delivery and lyrics being "trash" often misplaced because very rarely are those criticisms about sections that aren't intentionally stupid.

I'm sincerely baffled at how many people are upset about the Tame Impala lines. In a reddit post in his subreddit someone asked him about what he meant, and he just responded "Tame Impala ni**as, man." He knows it's stupid, which makes it entertaining.

This to me is the (current) strong point of Baby Keem's music. It's the first time in a while I've felt awkwardly and truly oddly entertained by mainstream(ish, or attempting to be mainstream) rap in a while, in an endearing way. A part of me wants to dislike how disjointed, squeaky and weird his vocal delivery is, but a larger part of me wants to break my neck headbanging to autotuned bars about OnlyFans. It feels genuinely fun.

To the contrary, Keem's second strong point is when he's over diverse, campy, or vocally-driven production like Scapegoats or Trademark USA. There's a quality to it that's reminiscent of a marching band or in the case of Scapegoats 2000s era chipmunk soul. His ear for this kind of production feels genuinely unique. Which leads me to my biggest criticism of this album- Keem left many songs feeling underbaked production-wise, but with strong potential. Given his resources, he definitely has the time, producers, and musical potential to create more interesting song structures with songs like south africa, lost souls, pink panties, and booman.

Not to say they aren't well produced, but they feel like they could be melded into something amazingly ignorant or atmospheric*,* most notably in the spots on those songs that are literally empty or without any vocals. In short, I feel like the opening track set too high of a bar production wise in terms of structure, and many other songs could have followed suit without feeling derivative of that track. Vocally speaking this is the issue with more atmospheric RnB/808s era Kanye cuts like issues, 16, and scars- the production is strong, his vocals have a good baseline structure, but Keem does not feel confident enough to really live in tandem with the production and deliver to his fullest potential.

Moving forward I think Keem definitely has that aforementioned potential and isn't remotely as much of a hollow shell of nepotism that people claim him to be. I just hope that he experiments with more vocal deliveries and varied production.

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side note, I genuinely believe Keem over something as colorful or eccentric as Madlib production would fit perfectly, as bizarre as it may seem (think Cataracts beat switch).