Smile For Me is the latest mixtape from rapper Blackwater Oda also known as B-Lo. He's a member of the group known as Corner Store Collective. B-Lo hails from Old Town, New Jersey. While New Jersey may not seem like the place for hip hop, it's birthed such legends as Redman, Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill as well as a host of others.
When it comes to instrumentals the mixtape doesn't provide much in original quality with many of them being reused from more popular songs. However, there's a good choice providing both some fast and slow tracks to flow over. The biggest issue I wold think is that B-Lo's flow sounds a little too forceful on some of the slower tracks. Almost if the words are being forced out of him. While this works great on the faster tracks it sometimes leaves a little to be desired.
The same goes for lyrics. At times there's lyrics that seem like he's peering into his own soul and reflecting. Those are great. Then there's the wordplay where a lot of it is really clever and shows he's a smart guy, but there are a few moments when you kind of just shake your head. There are also some moments where I'm reminded of this skit on Tech N9ne's album Everready called The Melancholy Maze. During the skit a woman that he went to high school with asks what he does for a living and he just sort of mumbles that "I'm a rapper. You know Strange Music" It reminds me of that skit because everybody already knows he's a rapper. She even mentions it before asking him. So sometimes it just feels like overkill because we already know B-Lo is a rapper and he just kind of tells us that a lot.
My least favorite track is B-Lo On The Scene. They rhyme pattern is just too repetitive to me. It's more like when Jim Jones ends every bar with a word that rhymes with the last one. That works for some people but not everyone. My favorite track is actually SUMMUH. It's one of the slower tracks on the album but it doesn't sound forced. It's more relaxed and doesn't lean on any wordplay to be a good track and we aren't reminded that he's a rapper. It's one of the tracks where he looks deeper than just rap music.
If I could make one suggestion for the next project, just expand the subject matter. That was my biggest problem with the mixtape. It just seemed as if the subjects were so repetitive that even when something completely different was being done in a song, it sometimes just seemed like a continuation of the last song. It's kind of distracting. It's like J. Cole, so much of his music sounds the same because so much of his music is about college, student loans and losing his virginity. It's not that it's bad, or he's not doing anything new, it's just that we've heard him do that before.
It's not a bad mixtape, but at the same time it's not exactly great. It's one of those projects where you don't have to listen to it every week, but every now and then a song may pop into your head and you go back to listen. It's in the category of music that you don't want scrubbed from memory but you also don't hold it in the highest esteem.
When it comes to instrumentals the mixtape doesn't provide much in original quality with many of them being reused from more popular songs. However, there's a good choice providing both some fast and slow tracks to flow over. The biggest issue I wold think is that B-Lo's flow sounds a little too forceful on some of the slower tracks. Almost if the words are being forced out of him. While this works great on the faster tracks it sometimes leaves a little to be desired.
The same goes for lyrics. At times there's lyrics that seem like he's peering into his own soul and reflecting. Those are great. Then there's the wordplay where a lot of it is really clever and shows he's a smart guy, but there are a few moments when you kind of just shake your head. There are also some moments where I'm reminded of this skit on Tech N9ne's album Everready called The Melancholy Maze. During the skit a woman that he went to high school with asks what he does for a living and he just sort of mumbles that "I'm a rapper. You know Strange Music" It reminds me of that skit because everybody already knows he's a rapper. She even mentions it before asking him. So sometimes it just feels like overkill because we already know B-Lo is a rapper and he just kind of tells us that a lot.My least favorite track is B-Lo On The Scene. They rhyme pattern is just too repetitive to me. It's more like when Jim Jones ends every bar with a word that rhymes with the last one. That works for some people but not everyone. My favorite track is actually SUMMUH. It's one of the slower tracks on the album but it doesn't sound forced. It's more relaxed and doesn't lean on any wordplay to be a good track and we aren't reminded that he's a rapper. It's one of the tracks where he looks deeper than just rap music.
If I could make one suggestion for the next project, just expand the subject matter. That was my biggest problem with the mixtape. It just seemed as if the subjects were so repetitive that even when something completely different was being done in a song, it sometimes just seemed like a continuation of the last song. It's kind of distracting. It's like J. Cole, so much of his music sounds the same because so much of his music is about college, student loans and losing his virginity. It's not that it's bad, or he's not doing anything new, it's just that we've heard him do that before.
It's not a bad mixtape, but at the same time it's not exactly great. It's one of those projects where you don't have to listen to it every week, but every now and then a song may pop into your head and you go back to listen. It's in the category of music that you don't want scrubbed from memory but you also don't hold it in the highest esteem.
You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet But right now he's playing Sleeping Dogs.
