B.O.A.T.S. II: # Me Time
Reviewed by: Evan Kramer
When I see the words “featuring 2 Chainz” on any song that I’m about to listen to, my brain cells, instinctively, command me to avoid the imminent disaster of experiencing horrible, lazy bars. To make 2 Chainz or Tity Boi even half tolerable, I try to view him as a comedic musician like Weird Al or The Lonely Island because his rhymes are so vapid, I think he’s purposely trying to make me laugh. Another way to tolerate Mr. Chainz is to throw him on the hook like in, “F***** Problems” by A$AP Rocky, one of my many songs that I categorize as a guilty pleasure. I believe this project is second in his discography collect, but last year, he released an album entitled, Based on a T.R.U. Story, which I believed was one of the worst Hip Hop albums of 2012 (Along with Finally Rich by Chief Keef, and Pluto by Future. I’ll throw in Don’t Be S.A.F.E. by Trinidad James in there, too. Why not?). Going into this album, I wasn’t expecting anything groundbreaking except for mother goose rhymes about himself, his females, his drugs, his shoes, his cars, his jewelry, his true religion jeans, maybe some of his ‘haters’, and nonsensical metaphors in half gibberish that compare a materialistic object that he owns. An obvious indicator would definitely have to be the hash tag in the album title. I’m expecting typical 2 Chainz, and typical Hip Hop, nowadays.
“Ma…Ma…You get that money out my pant, alayany”, is the first thing I hear from the song, “Fork”, and I’m starting to regret my decision of listening to this album rather quick at this point. Didn’t even hear a beat…didn’t even hear a rhyme. I eventually had to stop this song at the line, “I’m ballin’ like Mr. Clean/I gotta keep my kitchen clean.” Okay, I’m half lying. I paused the track, and looked out my window for roughly twelve seconds, shaking my head in disbelief. I stopped this track at the line, “My wrist deserve a shout-out, I’m like What up, wrist?/My stove deserve a shout-out, I’m like What up, stove?” Next song is “36”. It’s a one minute and thirty second song about drugs. Moving on.
“Feds Watching” featuring Pharrell came next on this track list, and it might sound surprising, but I kind of like the production. Apparently, 2 Chainz wants to look fresh when the ‘Feds Watching’, but even more ridiculous is how Pharrell is hardly on this track with only saying “Tomarr…Tomarr” in the thirty seconds. In “Where You Been”, 2 Chainz asks where we’ve been while he’s getting his money. I’m not too sure what other questions he had because this song made me fall asleep, but I’m sure they weren’t that important. Up next was a song called “I Do It” featuring Drake, and Lil Wayne, two pop rappers that are so terrible, I could go to the streets of New York and find five people that would slaughter them. I saw the time go up to six minutes, and I just freaked out, but I had to pull through. While Lil Wayne was talking about sexing women that he hates, and trying to intimidate me about building cemeteries, I was scrolling down, and glaring in fear at the total of seventeen tracks that I had to listen to.
Fergie appeared on a track called, “Netflix”, and 2 Chainz says he would like to make a sex tape and put it on Netflix with Fergie. He only says it two times, and goes into no depth about it. The rest of the song is about what he’s wearing, so I guess “Netflix” is an appropriate title, and why is Fergie rapping? After that song, “Extra”, is the next, and it is probably the worst song on the entire album. The production sounds like circus music, and 2 Chainz says “I fucked your bitch on accident” (however that’s possible), and whoever Rich Homie Quan is, he doesn’t really help with his feature in this track. The first verse he says “Snakeskin on my hat albino/I’m rich like Lionel, I get head like Rhino”. That just about it did it for me. I’m just surprised by how many of these tracks have the same, trap sound. 2 Chainz’s flow sounds really broken in the song, “Beautiful Pain”, and the line, “I hope you get testicular cancer in the brain, dickhead”, made me chuckle. The song “Mainstream Ratchet” automatically made me laugh. The first half of the beat sounded like one long fart, and the stupid lines really came up in this song like, “Calamari, crab cakes, my closet the size of your dad’s place.” 2 Chainz has a song committed to how different he is called “I’m Different” (how confusing), but ironically, the only songs that sound different are the song “Black Unicorn” towards the end, and the song “Outroduction”, which isn’t even the last track on the album. In the beginning of “Outroduction”, 2 Chainz just starts coughing, and like nothing just happened, he just continues the song. The chorus on the song “Employee of The Month” really puts the stress on the eardrum when he says, “To the back…to the front…she’s the employee of the month!” The last two songs, “Live And Learn”, and “Livin” are the latest cures to insomnia. I’ve never been happier to finish listening to an album since I listened to Yeezus by Kanye West.
With that being said, this album was a complete bore, and I think I would rank it lower than Based On A T.R.U. Story. The only way I could imagine anyone liking this is if they really like listening to poor lyrical quality, want to laugh, or admire trap-influenced production. My favorite song on this entire album was “Used 2”, and it was still really bad, so it’s kind of difficult for me to explain why I liked this track, but it mostly due to the production. To rate this album, the verdict would be ‘Intolerable’, and if I could go to a lower rating like ‘Throw It In A Fire’, then that would probably be my verdict of my B.O.A.T.S. II #METIME by 2 Chainz.
Rating: Intolerable