Never really got around to listening to this one, but tonight I started a Spotify Premium subscription so I figured shit, why not? and damn it's good. Obviously I heard Bonfire when it dropped back in '11 but that was before I was really into hip hop and before I was really into albums, so it's great that now I can really appreciate the thematic and aesthetic development of the album as a whole. It feels somewhere between the darkness of ...and then you shoot your cousin and Sage Francis's unbridled rage from Pressure Cooker, y'know? Definitely check it out if you get the chance.
God, that last track's got a fucking amazing story too. Makes me want to be 13 and alive and meet a girl that is 13 and alive. I guess I'll have to settle for this life; it's not so bad.
Real talk, I actually hate this album. I like Because the Internet a lot more, but for as much as I like Bino, his mixtapes are really the only things I'll put into relatively constant rotation. There's not much of a motif to Camp - it fell flat for me. But I guess a lot of it is relationship stuff and that doesn't really mesh with me anyways.
Though I guess I'm speaking retrospectively - I LOVED this album in High School. So I should say it falls flat for me now - I might like it at a different point in my life. Music is cool like that.
I don't know where I was going with this.
Blog post going live later today that talks about how sometimes it takes time, or "growing into," things to really appreciate them. At the end for the briefest second I consider the possibility that one can grow in, and grow out of, poems throughout life. I think it's an interesting thought and corroborates well to music too.
What?!
Whaaaaaat? His mixtapes?! Maybe I need to give Royalty another shot but damn that thing was out of whack. What about fucking Culdesac?
I read Camp as a series of singles. Two-thirds are really solid in my opinion and Heartbeat at least is one of the songs of the decade. That Power has some really solid verses where he can flash his unique rap style. Maaaaaaaan.
Culdesac is meh. Do Ya Like is alright. His voice bothers me in it, though, glad he grew out of it.
In terms of technical skill Royalty is pretty good. The features at least are high quality.
Camp just really doesn't do it for me. Bonfire is strutting and cawing that falls flat. Heartbeat is legit the anthem of every middle-school girl's Myspace page. That Power bores me. The story at the end just felt supa corny (sorry Gale). Everything else...like my ratio of songs that I'd skip heavily outweigh the amount of songs that I'd stop and listen to.
You See Me is hilarious, though.