This choice by Rocky is particularly frustrating because Rocky has shown, both on A.L.L.A and past albums, that he has the personality and multi-faceted talent to carry the load of a full-length studio album on his own.
It's all meat and no connective tissue.Įighteen featured artists and 23 producers are just far too many people to have on an album while hoping to maintain a cohesive sound. It seems like Rocky mashed all of these different styles together without an understanding of how they would work together.
doesn't say anything of substance about any of it despite the album having instrumentals that sound like it should – none of the tracks on A.L.L.A. It has musings about typical hip-hop stuff: women, sex, drugs, the usual. There's nothing on A.L.L.A to latch onto, nothing that gives you an impression of what this album is supposed to be about. The album has all of these influences, but they don't mesh together, sonically or lyrically, in any clear way. But the problem with Rocky's album is that there is no through-line. – the intro to the opening track is particularly reminiscent of Kendrick's album – and the dark, brooding sound that Drake's latest effort built its foundations upon. It has the soulful, psychedelic throwback funkiness that you can find on T.P.A.B. This isn't to say that A.L.L.A doesn't have aspects of what makes these other albums great, because it definitely borrows from all of them. In an age where hip-hop's biggest artists (read: Kanye, Drake, Kendrick Lamar) are making incredibly well crafted albums (read: Yeezus, If You're Reading This It's Too Late, To Pimp A Butterfly) with intensely specified sounds and themes throughout, A.L.L.A. is all over the place both in its musicality and its lyricism. There isn't a single bad song on the album.īut collaboration, like anything else in life, has its drawbacks, and one of those things is disorganization. Really, on a track-by-track basis, none of the features on the album do any damage, per se. On track eight, "Electric Body," Schoolboy Q's grimy delivery builds off of Rocky's, and enhances the menacing tone of the song. and Future, work together well, complementing each other's sounds. On the third track of the album "Fine Whine," the featured artists, M.I.A. And in practice, the synergy between artists at certain points on this album is impressive. Getting some of the biggest names in hip-hop to collaborate with you on your album should never be a bad thing in theory. (At Long Last A$AP), a dense 18-track album with just as many featured artists (Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Schoolboy Q, Future, M.I.A., UGK and Rod Stewart just to name a few), and an even greater number of producers. This is especially true of A$AP Rocky's second studio album, A.L.L.A.
Music, and hip-hop in particular, tends to be inherently collaborative.