#7'sup

Album Review

Kidd Vicious - 4 Swishers

When it comes to Hip Hop, establishing an identity is a difficult task. Often times, we see rappers being compared to other rappers as a way to make their music and image to digest. This also goes when it comes to producers trying to sell off beats. “Type” beats, have become a way for an artist to easily locate the sound that they are looking for. As far as being a rapper, it goes a little different. Things like flow and cadence are constantly compare and analyze in an attempt to identify the musicians. As a testament to this, Kidd Vicious could be billed as Arizona’s Gucci Mane. With a similar cadence and flow, Vicious presents simplified bouncy lyrics that are easy to comprehend and in. His newest LP 4 Swishers establishes Vicious as a strong candidate to shine more light on the trap world of Arizona.

Acting as a follow up to his short EP, 1-26-17, 4 Swishers presents itself as autobiographical as Vicious offers a decent range of music to represent him.  With his flow dialed in, Vicious effortlessly glides through the album with simple but potent lyrical prowess. Vicious isn’t trying to out rap anyone or become Arizona’s greatest lyricist. Instead, Kidd Vicious hammers out his hood perspective coupled with trap motivational style bars. Songs like “Bargins” and “Taxin” speak on Vicious’ perpetually continuous journey to get the money by any means. The stellar song “Stop Me” acts as a stand out track as the production, provided by DeeGee, features nostalgic hip hop breaks and soulful piano riffs.  This song also gives the most insight on what makes Kidd Vicious who he is as he speaks on his absentee father and sources of inspiration that push him to continue on his quest. While most of Vicious’ production is trap/cloud laced, the production coupled with Kidd Vicious’ approach to the song makes it one of the best of his career so far as he shows that he capable of more than just money making music.

Vicious really comes into his own with his lackadaisical flow and easy to digest lyrics. “Gin and Practice” produced by Chuck Hertz, makes for a great song to represent the cross section of Kidd Vicious’ style. Gucci Mane is the first rapper that comes to mind when hearing Vicious. With similar vocal tones and approach, it is clear that Gucci is a major influence on young Arizona artist. You could slip this song into one of Gucci’s many mixtapes and average listener probably wouldn’t notice.  A Gucci Mane fan might resonate with Vicious approach to hip hop more than others but his style isn’t for everyone.

With Vicious established flow comes the most glaring issue of 4 Swishers: Variety. Production wise, the album doesn’t make any grand achievements or strides in the spectrum of hip hop. When you add his generally basic flow to the mix, the album doesn’t act as a stand out project overall. While it does make for a solid spin, one shouldn’t go into this mixtape expecting their lives to be changed. Vicious does manage to establish a signature sound but it borrows to heavy from his mentor, Gucci Mane. As a result, the rapping lends itself to becoming stale as more voracious listeners of hip hop will grow tired of the flow.

Overall, 4 Swishers establishes Kidd Vicious as a solid rapper. Over time, I would like to see Vicious expand his horizons; maybe rap over more exotic and interesting production and push himself to dive more into the storytelling side of his arsenal. With digestible flows and lyrics, Vicious has the talent to really speak to the people. Hopefully he will use that to his advantage.