#grungecake

This eleven track project is full of promises from Adonis, Richie Lo, Suspect Jay and Ywnyell, the members of the group, who are determined to conquer rap world one step at a time by talking about everything you expect a bunch of young guys to talk about, and not creating unreal fantasies. This doesn't mean you won't find lyrics about getting rich (which would be beyond the incredible) but it means that they profess an honesty hard to find in already established and grown out artist.

After all we're talking about kids embedded in family lives, who have school way present in their day to day and who are starting their careers. Dreams are big but achievable. And they're determined to get to them taking no shortcuts. Following the typical gang-rap structure, songs are chopped into pieces each one of the artists sings by telling his own part of the story. And to your surprise, coming out of the Queens and not the Mexican-American border, they rap some chunks in Spanish too.

While they don't actually force the rhymes and they flow smoothly through the beats, sometimes there is an overdose of them that to me feels like a lack of maturity in the group. Nothing to worry about, as they'll only keep growing and learning from here on. That being said and as I stated earlier, the composition of lyrics and music feels nice to the ears as most of the words combine perfectly while expressed at Dem Boyz's rhythm.

To put a mention on a concrete song and discuss a piece of the project with more detail, it's worth noting some points about "Mitch", the song that truly made DB FTW broke into something interesting through the Internet. In it the collective make something clear in the hook stating that money controls everything and thus they want it as everyone would want it, in all honesty.

Then is when things start to get interesting as each of the members tells the listener how he sees this stuff and the situation he’s at. YawnYell gets the game started by making it clear the already commented message, but adding that Dem Boyz want to get the competition out of the ring and proclaiming themselves leaders at rap business. Adonis follows. And I like Adonis' verse because while being so simple, it leaves the door open to a clear metaphor. He talks about hustling, and about giving polished and potent and demolishing stuff to customers. Is he talking drugs? More to debate, he ends with "You only get one shot so do not miss your time to blow". Give it a thought.

Although you can put Ty Dolla into the R&B bunch of artists that are appearing lately, this project screams rap all the way to his end, with soft melodies but hard lyrics. Is at this, at writing, where Ty gets a little repetitive and goes around the same sexual idea over and over through all of the songs but the last one, which changes the tone of the record a bit. But the main thing to appreciate in this EP are the sounds it carries and how well blended they are, from synths to basses to trap melodies.

As far as the content goes, and reviewing the lyrical aspect of the record, Ty Dolla puts more than enough attention to tell the listener how he likes girls and how he’s got all the money he’s had access to. And that, my friends, seems to have make him auto proclaim himself the champion of hoe-dumping.

In the two versions of “Paranoid”, one of the singles carrying the big load of this project, the tone remains the same and slight changes are made to what seems to be the epitome of the whole EP. Ty has the best women and they’re beautiful and they’re awesome and every other woman not around Ty can basically suicide because she is not worth a dime. To add some spice (just in case you didn’t think there was enough), Dolla and his peers talk about the greatness of their dicks and how great they’re in bed. Totally cool and interesting and insightful stuff.

The midpoint of the EP, as expected, is “Or Nah”, the single with Wiz Khalifa produced by DJ Mustard. Not only was it able to gather some more than normal attention, it was remixed by The Weeknd and somehow ended having an official version that has already surpassed the 150 million views mark on YouTube. So that’s something. Wiz starts strong telling us about his life (as if we don’t know) and how great it is and how it is full of drugs and money and drinks and chicks. He could actually die any moment given this situation but he doesn’t gives a shit and you have to praise that calm. Ty Dolla comes in later to tells the exact same thing and ask girls around if they’re all in for him or nah. As a leading hit, it’s not highly creative or mind blowing in terms of content, but it’s catchy and they explain their roles quite nicely.

Later on, in “Familiar”, the most remarkable thing happens when Fredo Santana steps up and takes the mic to say something not very thought, such as “I seen that bitch somewhere, I think it was the Heat game”.

To end this work Ty Dolla pairs with Jay Rock as he did in 2013’s “Beach House 2”. And after six tracks full of girls, dicks and macho-lyrics, he finally changes his mindset to talk about how he made it through the wild scene to get to where he is right now, a respected position in rap. Although the rest of the project is not a hard thought one in terms of lyrics (it falls in the basic sex-money-drugs time and time again) but stands out in terms of production and sound, Ty was smart enough to end this EP with something different, something relatively unexpected by the listener after all that fanfare. Jay Rock also delivers a verse that improves the lyrical aspect of it talking about how the rap world works and how he, the same as Ty, made it through.

With a hard working background, taking care of a kid and holding two jobs at the same time (both at Papa Johns and UPS), his time for rap was totally trimmed in the past, not allowing him to put full attention to its development. Even with that, he broke into the scene in 2011 with his mixtape Killer Instincts. Now things have changed. Tiller signed with RCA Records turning down Drake’s OVO, and with this his first serious album he’s making an impact that will probably make him last around.

With a melodic sound that clearly displays R&B and trap soul elements, this album has one clear and personal side in it in which Tiller goes all over a love relationships with an alleged girl that appears all over the track list. On top of those thoughtful songs, Bryson sings a few tracks in where he introduce himself and his hometown Louisville in a way much more aggressive, making you know, even if you don’t want to hear it, that he’s here to stay. You have to believe this, because if he was able to pull this album without practically touching any of the beats he worked with, it’s to expect that he’ll crush it even more when he has the time and rights to get over them in future works.

The whole project starts with “Intro (Difference)”, where Tiller introduces himself to a girl telling her that he’s different from everything she knows. The first thirty seconds are enough to know what you’re about to listen through the whole album. It looks promising and Bryson makes it interesting to the listener. Although he has made it clear that this was a project packed with personal songs about love, I took a different route halfway through the second song to translate this girl into music and the rap scene, which makes perfect sense through most of the album.

Tiller wants the music industry to know he’s different. Tiller wants the music industry to know he’s here and that he’s about to become famous, to become the next one. And he’s definitely crazy about music now that he’s fully devoted to it. He doesn’t want to fall in the same errors he once did, and he’s willing to improve and make everything for this girl, which roughly translates to him being full committed to rap after getting rid of the jobs he once find hard to get.

One great line to me in this double-meaning story is when he says “I was scrollin' through the 'gram, girl, I had to follow you ”. In an era where Internet is about everywhere, Bryson found his first huge hit in “Don’t”, which has been played almost 30 million (!) times in SoundCloud and which talks about how this girl (for us music, remember) has never been fully loved and therefore he’s the one to offer her the goods she’s never had.

It’s in the seventh track where Tiller shows his double face. At this point you have a clear concept of the softness of his sounds and melodies, but it all goes off in “Ten Nine Fourteen”. He starts a rant. A rant about how great he is, about how he got in touch with Drake, about how Timbaland contacted him and then signed him, and something less important but equally interesting on how he feels Lil Wayne must had been on acid when he was rapping and selling megatons of tons of Carters.

The rest of the album goes back to his already listened soft sounds, although he maintains his sharpness all the way through it. In back to back songs (“Rambo” and “502 Come Up”) he goes back to the route he followed in his first rant, advising other rappers to be careful about who they’re dealing with because he’s made with an special mold. Bryson is not here to play no games, he’s motherfucking Rambo, so you better watch out. Then after that, he turns into a Drake-esque tone to put Louisville in the map, and he’s nothing but humble putting himself up to the heights of DeVante Parker and D’Angelo Russell, two studs about to crush the NFL and the NBA that, not coincidentally, come from the “Ville”.

To close the album Tiller turns on the girl conversation again, making it clear that he wants no gold diggers around, that he’s so deep into loving her (in “Been That Way”, the song I personally think you have the most chances of end listening in any radio station), and that he’ll be with the girl no matter what happen and what other guys think about it. To close his first project, Bryson goes quite personal (the song is actually a response to his girlfriend after he received a large text message from her he didn’t know how to reply to) and say sorry to his girl.