Review Summary: Welcome to the field of dreams for music fiends.
The immediate feeling when you start the music is eeriness, then the setting quickly establishes at street level. Human voices float around the soundscape regularly through clips. Samples carry a soulful weight, burying the listener in epic recollections fitting the album title. Being honest, sports never hold my attention in themselves. I can work with the metaphorical, though, as listening to Boldy's aggressive, monotone raps hold down perfectly matched against The Alchemist's dark, funky, and driving beats. The beats on
Bo Jackson are sufficiently heavy, offering enough space for Boldy to nimbly maneuver, and both combine superbly. Receive a glorious dose of psychedelic personality that will drop your sports card collection into a shredder and rearrange your game plan with fresh perceptions.
Several soundbites center around the theme of the athlete Bo Jackson, likening Boldy's own life history and polymath talent scheme to the sports icon. For all the hype and ego in the message,
Bo Jackson isn't a one-man team in the slightest. Sure, there's The Alchemist setting a high bar even within his own body of work, but features deliver strong performances across the board. The first guest, Benny the Butcher, will be familiar to Griselda fans. Benny may not give the fans another "Scrape the Bowl" and who could expect another. That song is an all-time great. Earl Sweatshirt and Roc Marciano team up with Boldy for one of the main highlights of the album, "Photographic Memories." Speaking to the giant steps forward for the culture, lyrics in this track balance victory celebrations with the toll of the work, the blood, sweat, and tears spent. Other features include Stove God Cooks, Curren$y, and Freddie Gibbs and not one could be accused of phoning in their bars.
Back to the idea of photographic memories,
Bo Jackson easily identifies itself as the brightly lit and high definition main event to
Super Tecmo Bo's easy victory lap.
Bo Jackson hands off a supreme collection fit for a championship showcase. Boldy tells a story with every line. Every rhyme pushes the narrative forward. These memories are intelligently fixed to the titular sports metaphor. The whole album is a play by play remembrance of the aged sports fanatic mesmerized by his sports memorabilia while glorying in the touchdowns of days long since lost to time. Boldy runs his games like Bo Jackson. The real art traded to the listener is the photographs imaginatively and naturally illustrated via rhyme. Words divide and turn as looked at through a kaleidoscope, teleporting fans to that otherworldly place where pain transforms to purpose, transcending the mundane.
Every dream ends and every dose fades out. At the conclusion, you'll be glad you had your ticket scanned and that you witnessed the game in person.
Bo Jackson instills awe in the fan and never lets that feeling go 'til the music stops. You may come away challenged to process the experience. You might get fired up and carry that flame into your own next moves. Whatever the effect, you will be changed, and, who knows, these just might be the days you'll look back on and dream about during the last waking hours of your life.
