God, get a guys music review note here. And I’m listening to one album every day throughout 2024. Today I listen to and then you pray for me by West Side Gun.
This is the fifth album from New York. Fashion designer, businessmen, curator, hip hop artist, songwriter and Griselda member and founder, West Side Gun. And I think that I’ve made it well documented at this point how much I am a fan of West Side Guns music. I love his presence. I love his adlibs and I really love pray for Paris ever since I listen to that album for the very first album, the day of 2024, I’ve just been listening to it nonstop. And I’ve even upgraded it to one of my candidates.
The next project by gun, which I listened to was this mix tape 10, which I thought was okay, but it wasn’t really as good as present Paris, even though it was gonna be a very heavy task in my eyes to top such an amazing album, I still expected a little bit better. Although I did think that there were a lot of good ideas on 10, most specifically West Side Gun wrapping over trap beads. And so when I was recommended to go ahead and listen to this album, which apparently has a lot of trap beats, I was excited. I was also a little bit cautious. 21 songs and an hour 15.
That’s not really the most promising looking runtime or track length, but nevertheless, I had faith that this would be a good album. And I feel like this is more of a playlist than it is an album. What I mean by this is that I kind of feel that West Side Gun just made a whole bunch of songs and we, the listeners, could just choose what we loved listening to and the rest we can just forget about. I was excited when I was listening to the first of the album, but by the time I got to the second half, I was beginning to get a little bit burnt out, especially with just how inconsistent this album is. The last thing you want if your album is going to be 20+ tracks, is inconsistent.
And what’s interesting to me is that a lot of the songs on this album are trap influence, but there’s also a couple of songs which really remind me of the pray for Paris sounds, the more nuanced and the more broom Bab influence sounds. And whilst I do like quite a few of the traffic shipmentals on here, significantly more than the ones on 10, I just like more instrumentals, like most Prime Time and Kitchen Lights. Especially Kitchen Lights. That song sounds so utterly beautiful. And I think that West Side Gun absolutely glided over that. But to be honest, there’s no real instrumentals on here which I listen to and necessarily think are outright bad. As a matter of fact, the only instrumentation that I don’t really care for on here are flyguard did house of glory and ll bulgun. I just feel like none of those instrumentals had any effort put into them. On the other hand, though, along with the really beautiful place of Paris type of instrumentals, there’s some really awesome and energetic traffic instrumentals. These are the type of instrumentals that I want to hear. West Side Gun over more. Hostess Dunhill missed everything in ultragood. Zelda, those instruments get my head bopping and they just make me wanna start a motion. Okay.
And similarly to pray for Paris, there were a lot of producers who West Side Gun work with on this album. Take Heath, Beat Butcher, Rizzer, conductor Williams, Miguel the Plug, Daringer. Most of them did absolutely fantastic. The only problem is, though, is that I feel like Westside Gunn actually has some of his worst performances on a few of these songs. And I really hate saying that because I love a lot of West Side Guns music. But for some reason, there’s just a couple of moments on here where I don’t feel that he hits the way he should, whether it be him sounding a tad off bait on Dunhill, lacking his commanding presence on the song L. L. Bugan, or even trying to sing on the song house of glory. It’s really laughably bad. I will forever think that West Side Gun has an amazing voice for wrapping. As for seeing, though, well, baby, why you leave?
It’s so bad. But I can’t help but laugh at it. Now. There is a faint possibility that in the future, I could simply just discard it as camp. But oh my god, listening to that bone for the first time, I. Right, because I was laughing so much. Thankfully, though, there are more highlights than there are lowlights in terms of West Side Guns wrapping. When West Side Gun does wrapping, right, I just can’t help but feel completely invested in it, eh? Yeah, ain’t nobody fresher.
That’s word mid aim everywhere on the world that gets a calm. But comparing your eyebrows and another old red goat with a chopstick.
I feel like West Side Guns performances on here are very hit on this. But when they hit, oh my god, they hit. Finally, there is the songwriting on this album, which is also, unfortunately, rather hit or miss. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a West Side Gun at this point. It’s basically just West Side Gun talking about how he’s, the illness and how he used to be a certain substance maker. But there’s also a couple of songs which don’t exactly fall under that category. There is the absolute train wreck that is Chloe, which is meant to be a love song, but it is just so bad. It’s a very wild song. So I’m not gonna detail any certain lyrics from that song, but just know that it is wild. It is an absolute dumpster fire.
There’s also the opening lines to West Side Guns. First on the song, Chloe, Baby, why you leave me? I only banged her 100 times, but I love you, eh? My god. Yeah, may. I cheated on you a whole lot, but I promise that you’re the one that I love. So what do you say? Shall we get back together also?
There is a certain moment in West Side. Guns first on Mister. Everything, which I cannot say, but I just want you to know that it is really cringy. Some things just don’t really need to be talked about within music website. Other than that though, it’s just West Side Gun, talking about West Side Gun topics. And if you’re a fan of that like I am, then you’ll mostly enjoy that. But I do not fully enjoy this album. Just 21 songs, very inconsistent. And listening to it in one sitting actually took a lot of energy for me. Again, I can’t help but just view this album more as a playlist more than an actual album. I’m going to take the song from this that I like and I’m going to continue listening to them. As for the songs which I don’t like or I’m underwhelmed by, I’m just going to completely forget about them. There’s a great moments on this album and I still really love West Side Gun as a hip hop musician, but I just don’t really feel like he try to make the best project here. I just want his next tape to just not be so long, not be so inconsistent, and I just want him to try and sound a little bit more confident on some tracks. What should I listen to next? Let me know down below and stay tuned for the other days.