Review Summary: meh
The opening strings to kick off
Dark Sky Paradise are menacing enough to reel someone like myself in. Those few seconds, as clouds rumble in the distance, are worthy of rap superstars currently dominating the hip-hop scene; a grand entrance to a rapper I had not previously paid much attention to. For a moment, I’m actually impressed and just a little excited.
And then, Big Sean speaks.
And everything goes downhill as usual.
For those unfamiliar, Big Sean is a Detroit-based rapper whose debut album
Finally Famous produced multiple mainstream chart-toppers such as “Marvin and Chardonnay” and “My Last”. While his sophomore effort,
Hall of Fame, failed to attract the same attention, his features on Kanye-affiliated hits “Mercy” and “Clique” have kept Big Sean relevant in the hip-hop community. This new release sees Big Sean attempting to sound more intense than what we heard on his previous works, but in the end sounding pretty average in terms of lyricism and inflection, while the beats consistently remain the best part of the album.
This is the usual scenario with Big Sean, who has based his entire career on relatively shallow lyricism. On
Dark Sky Paradise, however, he doesn’t actually sound particularly bad in any of his verses (save for maybe the incessantly awful hook on “Deep”), but there is nothing here that is particularly impressive either. It mostly retreads the same boastful swagger that has become synonymous with hip hop contemporaries Chief Keef and
Yeezus-era Kanye, but just as it does with these rappers, Big Sean’s act gets tiresome fast. Even the big-name guest verses here are pretty mediocre in their lyricism, with Kanye producing an unconvincing verse for “All Your Fault” and Drake sounding like he is in desperate need of a nap on “Blessings”.
All this lyrical mediocrity would potentially be excusable, though, if it weren’t for Big Sean’s
vocal delivery. His inflection sounds almost as nasal as the delivery of Soulja Boy, and, as one might imagine, it is annoying on a frequent basis. (“One Man Can Change the World” is the biggest offender here, even amongst the lush John Legend piano.) It is no coincidence, then, that the best tracks on
Dark Sky Paradise are the ones where he drops his voice into a raspy drawl, such as second-half gem “Win Some, Lose Some”.
This leaves the beats as the only salvageable aspect of this album, and the production is quite impressive compared to Big Sean's previous efforts. The trap influence is very prevalent here, a minimalist genre that can appear very amateurish if not done properly. Luckily for Big Sean, most of the tracks come hard and do not relent, intertwining well with the Kanye-influenced, pitched-up soul samples that are scattered throughout the album. There are a few detours, such as the fantastic, funky closer “Outro”, but otherwise the album is straightforward with solid bangers. It’s just too bad they continue to be marred by Big Sean himself.
