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Album Review: Amari Juwan: F.A.C.E. The Music


Amari Juwon is an artist from Greensboro, North Carolina who recently released his first mixtape titled F.A.C.E. The Music.  F.A.C.E. stands for “Forever Always Continue Emerging.” I understand why it was shortened to just F.A.C.E. Well, let’s get into the review.

The flow isn’t bad, but you don’t have the breath control to pull it off. You’ll start going then take a deep breath right in the microphone. At this point it’s either work on your breath control, or pick a different flow to use. Another issue is at some points it just seemed like you wanted to jam as many multisyllabic words as humanly possible into the verse despite the fact that they were sometimes used incorrectly, creating an unintelligible cacophony. Some songs sounded like that last sentence.

Jay Z once rapped “Just beause you don't understand him, it don't mean that he nice. It just means you don't understand all the bullshit that he writes. Is it "Oochie Wally Wally" or is it "One Mic"? Is it "Black Girl Lost" or shorty owe you for ice?” Jay was speaking about the fact that Nas often switches between personas. Going from black power to drug dealing, love to war etc. Jay was saying this causes confusion. That confusion leads people to believe that an artist is actually much deeper than they are. F.A.C.E. suffers from that. 

In one track Amari can go from “I’m a schoolboy” to “young niggas don’t listen” as if he isn’t a schoolboy. There are also instances when he tells people they should open their minds and ignore thoughts from the outside but the hook on the next track will be “Pray to God.” One track will about the importance of the school and the next is about riding around with his crew and running up on other crews, but not being afraid to go to jail. The entire Amari Juwon persona is confusing an whack.

Here’s some advice, pick one or the other. You’re not going to please everyone. Are you an atheist or a saint. Are you a scholar or a baller. Pick one, you’re doing too much. It doesn’t confuse people it just leaves a bad taste.  People aren’t going to listen when your entire project is filled with hypocritical statements. If you had a clear theme of duality on the project it could have worked. But there was no clear theme on the project at all. Nothing linking together the tracks and it showed.

But it’s not all bad. The selection of instrumentals was great. There weren’t instrumentals chosen just for popularity purposes. It wasn’t overloaded with samples and didn’t feature 100 sound bites from tv shows and movies. You also picked instrumentals that worked with your voice not against it. The quality production was also there. Your voice wasn’t drowned out by the instrumentals and it also didn’t sound like you were yelling over every song just to be heard.

  • Lyricism- 6
  • Flow-7
  • Production-8
  • Theme-3
  • Replayability- 3
  • Individuality-3

The Final score is a 5/10 meaning you should probably skip it. But the good news is Amari is young so he’s got time to bounce back. This was just a really bad project. Not because he’s a bad artist but because he was attempting to do too much. All the tools are there to be a successful artist. Good choice in beats, flow, lyrics. If Amari learns to craft a project and stick to one persona this would be a completely different review. You can’t please everyone so there’s no need to make gangster rap and gospel rap. That’s ignorant. Just pick one and stick with it, you’ll be fine. 

You can follow Amari Juwon on Soundcloud and Twitter
 
You can follow me on the CP Time podcast and Twitter

DOWNLOAD F.A.C.E.

 
Darrell S.

Hey, I write stuff, a lot of different stuff, that's all.

1 Comments

  1. THAT ALBUM WAS WACK AS HELL. BRUH, I DECIDED TO LISTEN BECAUSE I THOUGHT Y'ALL WAS BEING MEAN. WHEN I LISTENED, I WAS MAD AS HELL. YOU GUYS GAVE HIM JUSTICE THIS WAS MORE LIKE A 2/10. NIGGA IS ASS, I SWEAR I ONLY GAVE HIM A 2 SO HE CAN GO BACK 2 THE STUDIO FR MAN.

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