Album Reviews

Album: SremmLife
Artist: Rae Sremmurd
Release Date: January 6, 2015
Label: EarDrummers/Interscope
Genre: Hip-hop

SremmLife is the debut studio album by hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd. Most of the tracks were produced by Mike WiLL Made-It (if you can’t tell by the annoying audio-watermark at the beginning of a few of their songs). The album was definitely not made to listen to as a full work, because doing so would infuriate anyone. They have money and like weed and nobody can tell them what to do. That sentence can replace the whole album in terms of lyrical content. There’s nothing of substance here, it’s like the outside world is foreign to the young duo. As for how the songs actually sound, they range from tolerable to just bad. Swae Lee and Slim Jimmy’s half-strained-yelling/half-kind-of rapping do not work over the surprisingly bland production. The beats feel copy-pasted from one song to the next.

I’m just surprised by how little work seemed to go into the songs. Most of the songs contain an overlong and often annoying hook that pretty much take up the whole track length. Themes and phrases are repeated infinitely, and to be completely honest, I just finished listening to the album and I can’t even think of any verses specifically, because it’s just so bland. All I know is an instinctual feeling not to play any of these songs ever again.

Am I being too harsh? We get it, you’re rich; I should be jealous! Ha ha ha! The banality of the tracks can’t be overstated. There’s not even a so-bad-it’s-good factor, it doesn’t feel like they care about their own music. Usually I have a list at the bottom for “great” and “not-so-great” tracks, but I’ll have to change those terms to more accurately represent how I feel.

I still have the sound of Slim Jimmy yelling in my ear.

Least Annoying Track: “No Type”
Most Annoying Tracks: “Unlock the Swag,” “My X,” “Up Like Trump”

FINAL RATING: 2.5/10