Ab-Soul
These Days...
Release Date: Jun 24, 2014
Genre(s): Rap, Alternative Rap, Underground Rap
Record label: Top Dawg
Music Critic Score
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Album Review: These Days... by Ab-Soul
Very Good, Based on 15 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
Ab-Soul is a complex emcee gifted with a smooth flow and the ability to be profound and irredeemably profane in the space of a few bars. On These Days... that versatility is his biggest strength. On West Coast-indebted TWACT, Soul is exuberant - ratchet even - without sacrificing his laser-sharp lyricism.
Based on rating 4.0/5
Ab-Soul is in a familiarly different place from where he was two years ago. While Kendrick Lamar and ScHoolboy Q tacked on some extra label affiliations for their latest albums—Aftermath and Interscope for Lamar, just the latter for Q—Soul is still free of that pressure. But as TDE and its roster have plotted a successful mainstream assimilation, he doesn’t need either of the bigger vehicles for These Days… to feel like its own commercial introduction.
Based on rating 7.7/10
There was a strange amount of secrecy revolving around Ab-Soul’s new album These Days…, to the extent that the Los Angeles rapper was still hosting listening parties and clarifying his independent label status the weekend before the album’s release. Coming off critical acclaim behind his last full-length, Control System, and the recent launch to superstardom of his Black Hippy-collaborators Kendrick Lamar and Schoolboy Q with Interscope albums in a (widely misreported) deal with Top Dawg Entertainment, the hype doesn’t seem off-base. But it is noteworthy that this is not an Interscope release like Lamar’s and Schoolboy’s, and likewise, some of the hype has featured undertones of fear that These Days… might be D.O.A.
Based on rating 7.7/10
"I'm this close to just leakin my shit like its a mixtape," Ab-Soul tweeted in frustration back in May. It's a tough spot for Ab, the most lyrical member of one of the most celebrated rap groups of the moment, to find himself in. The last time he released a project, the formidable Control System, it was 2012, the halcyon year of TDE: Schoolboy Q had scored the group's first radio success with Habits & Contradictions' "Hands on the Wheel", and Kendrick Lamar's major-label debut was a bright spot forming on the horizon.
Based on rating 7/10
About halfway through highly touted TDE rapper Ab-Soul's major label debut, These Days… you have to wonder, "What's the point?" Sandwiched throughout the album are a 23-minute track, "W.R.O.H.," the random addition of a man named Jimmy, the self-proclaimed "white Ab-Soul" and a cavalcade of clever/clunky Ab-Soul word conjunctions. Yet somehow, amongst the madness, Soul makes it work. "God's Reign" features Canadian electro duo Purity Ring's signature sonic outer space vistas while Ab-Soul laments, "My girl died and I lost my mind and I'm off of everything but heroine."Meanwhile, the lean-fuelled "Ride Slow" has the rapper trading lyrical barbs with Danny Brown as their drug addled high reaches its inevitable end.
Based on rating B-
Ab-Soul has completely lost control. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s just different. When the California rapper first popped onto the rap radar with his cameo on the outro of Kendrick Lamar’s indie album, Section.80, it was clear that he had all the answers. These days, it feels like he’s questioning a lot of things.
Based on rating 6.5/10
Head here to submit your own review of this album. In December 2013, the CEO of Top Dawg Entertainment - Anthony Tiffith - declared that his label would release 6 major projects in 2014. So far Schoolboy Q, SZA and Isaiah Rashad have put out LPs to varying commercial and critical acclaim. All TDE releases suffer from being released in the shadow of Kendrick Lamar's modern classic good kid, m.A.A.d city.
Based on rating 3/5
L.A. rapper Ab-Soul comes out of the same Black Hippy collective that's produced platinum star Kendrick Lamar and gritty chart-topper Schoolboy Q. With a rep as the crew's most cerebral member, Ab-Soul works a warm underdog weirdness over heavy-lidded beats on his third album. He rarely strives for the depth of Lamar or the intensity of Q; there's plenty of clever imagery on These Days .
Based on rating 3/5
“I want to try and touch as many bases as possible. I want something on there for everybody. There will be a lot of references to the vibe of today, the sound of today and the subject matter of today.”– Ab-Soul “Movies made for ‘everybody’ are actually made for nobody in particular. Movies about specific characters in a detailed world are spellbinding because they make no attempt to cater to us; they are defiantly, triumphantly, themselves.”– Roger Ebert Crafting and maintaining an identity as a rapper in 2014 is not an easy feat, especially when your contemporaries consist of Kendrick Lamar and Danny Brown.
Based on rating 5/10
Control System was one of the best gems of 2012, a classic year in hip-hop if I need to remind everyone. On it, Ab-Soul revealed himself to be a completely different beast than his TDE label-mates, either in wordplay (see: “ILLuminate”), subject matter (“Terrorist Threats”) or, simply put, soul (see: “Book of Soul”). Or, to borrow from one of Robert Christgau’s more poetic reviews, “He’s ready to blow [money] on love rather than blow or a blow job […] He’s just a gifted kid who likes his weed and his words which he twists with palpable delight around sparse synth beats musical enough to layer on some delight of their own.
Opinion: Excellent
Barbershop deliberation has broadened its conversational arc in recent years, temporarily laying rest to the Kobe-or-LeBron debates and the mysterious absence of Tim Duncan in exchange for who’s the best MC in TDE? Kendrick, Jay Rock, ScHoolboy Q, or Ab-Soul? Close scrutiny of the anatomy of many crews past will reveal rotten cesspools of yes-men, and nepotism. But Soulo is no Silkk The Shocker, although most would readily describe him as offbeat, a MC known for freely spanning the entirety of human civilization in his subject matter; From Moses to Moscato, slavery to Sativa, politics to the pineal gland. The only thing that delves deeper than Ab-Soul is his rabid fan base, which is why the Internet came within earshot of spontaneously combusting when rumors of conflict within the TDE fortress surfaced, commencing when Soulo threatened to leak These Days… material early.
Opinion: Great
opinion byDREW MALMUTH Since releasing Control System, and establishing himself as an adept practitioner of TDE's conscientious/vicious aesthetic, Ab-Soul has maintained that he doesn't pay attention to expectations. As the familiar Rap trope goes, he's just going to “do him. ” He observed in a recent interview that “in being a man, if you aren't comfortable being yourself you should try to work on that.
Opinion: Very Good
In the shadow of Top Dawg Entertainment’s “good kid” Kendrick Lamar and its “Oxymoron” Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul’s branded himself as the crew’s deep thinker. Smart rappers generally don’t have any problems telling you how smart they are — Soul’s definitely been guilty of that in the past — but after waiting two years between projects, then purging his frustration about it on Twitter, he sounds more concerned with reminding people that he’s not the bottom rung in TDE’s ladder. He stays away from heavier themes — track titles like “God Reigns” are practically decoys — and the album’s almost accidentally better for it.
Opinion: Very Good
Ab-Soul’s third album is never able to escape its Top Dawg DNA. The fingerprints of his labelmates, especially the other members of the Black Hippy collective, are all over the album: From a literal appearance of Schoolboy Q’s “Collard Greens,” to “Kendrick Lamar’s Interlude”—in which Ab says, “If I ain’t better than Kendrick, nobody is”—the record exudes anxiety about living up to the standards of Ab’s ascendant compatriots. That would be fine if the songs rose to the challenge, but they’re often paralyzed, caught between Q’s crowd-pleasing instincts and K-Dot’s grand statements.
Opinion: Fairly Good
The first thing that pops out about These Days…, Ab-Soul’s latest album, is the star power. The listener is left wondering whether TDE pulled out all the stops on this one to celebrate their new found hip-hop superstardom, or to cover for the fact that this effort simply just does not achieve the same level of excellence that we’ve come to expect from Black Hippy. Soulo is often overshadowed by the slew of hip-hop heavyweights on the record: Lupe Fiasco on “World Runners”, Rick Ross on “Nevermind”, Danny Brown, Earl Sweatshirt and Delusional Thomas (aka Mac Miller) on “Ride Slow.