![]() Between joints like Mercy, New God Flow, and the oft-overlooked I Still Wanna, Pusha has been tagged on enough strong tracks since the last Clipse LP, 2009s Til the Casket Drops, to ensure that therell be plenty of commercial interest by the time he does give us his own album (in March, tentatively). Music role-player/everybodys favorite coke-rap aphorists pending solo debut, My Name Is My Name, has zero chance of flopping on any level. The pre-album mixtape as a form is generally used to direct extra attention to forthcoming LPs in need of a publicity boost, and the Clipse member/G.O.O.D. Right now, I'm just hoping Pusha makes an album strong enough that we can all pretend Fear of God never happened.Pusha T didnt need to make Wrath of Caine. 2, he shouldn't even be letting us hear it. And unless that freestyle turns out to be as sharp as what he was doing on We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. Pusha shouldn't have to leave his basement to record a "Can I Live" freestyle. If that's true- and it might be- it makes no sense. ![]() At the beginning of his freestyle over Jay-Z's "Can I Live", Pusha says that he's recording at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. And considering the amount of faith Kanye seems to have in Pusha, I can't understand why he'd do so little to prove Kanye right. Friday tracks and his My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy verses, Pusha sounded like Kanye had lit a fire up under him that fire seems nothing but a barely-glowing ember through most of Fear of God. Otherwise, though, it's just a confusing affair. ![]() If Pusha had made a whole mixtape of songs like these, it would've been incredible. And on "I Still Wanna", he shares a churning, operatic Rick Ross-type beat with Ross himself, and everyone comes out sounding bloodthirsty. "Raid" has an absolutely vicious piano-driven Neptunes beat and an on-fire cameo from 50 Cent, and Pusha raises his game accordingly, giving his most energetic performance of the mixtape. On too much of Fear of God, nobody even seems to be trying.īut when the mixtape does crackle to life, we see a whole other side of the solo rapper Pusha could be. And on "Open Your Eyes", producer Nottz turns "Bohemian Rhapsody" into pitched-up chipmunk soul, which nobody ever needed to hear. But too often on Fear of God, he's just filling space with flat, workmanlike rhyme patterns and out-of-gas punchlines: "Money on my mind like my pillow is a vault." "Touch It", in which Pusha and Kanye beg for head, is the weakest Kanye West track in years, complete with a beat that must've been sitting around Kanye's hard drive forever. Pusha has some serious gifts in his favor: a great snarling delivery, a vivid eye for detail, a writer's gift for getting well-trod ideas across in ways nobody could've expected. On opening song "My God", Pusha snarls, "Bear witness as I unveil this instant classic," but nothing about the tape suggests that he's interested in making any sort of classic. This is when Pusha should be establishing himself as a major artist, not freestyling over Soulja Boy's "Speakers Going Hammer". Instead, he's given us a mixtape so flat and lazy that I almost don't know why it exists at all.įear of God is less than 40 minutes long, and too much of that running time is given over to pointless freestyles over well-circulated tracks, or to tracks so flimsy that they barely exist. If ever there was a time for Pusha to make good on all his underdog promise, this is it. Now Pusha has a label boss who appears to have full faith in him, and that label boss happens to be the most visionary producer in rap today. Pusha got to step onstage at the VMAs in a "Miami Vice"-looking dinner jacket and deliver a shattering closing verse on "Runaway", and Kanye made room for Pusha verses in a ton of his G.O.O.D. Kanye West snapped him up as a solo artist and made him the linchpin of Kanye's G.O.O.D. And all of a sudden, Pusha seems to be closer to stardom than he ever came in the Clipse. A year ago, the group's critical and commercial future looked dim, and Malice embarked on an unexpected religious journey that led him to write a Bible-informed memoir.
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