Written Before Listen
Migos are an Atlanta hip hop trio consisting of Quavo, Takeoff and Offset. They came into the map with their triplet flows, eccentricity and undeniable chemistry. With Culture III coming out recently, I decided to visit all 3 culture albums. The first Culture had some really infectious hooks and verses but surely had its mid points which resulted in a mediocre score. Looking at the track list of this album, this is nearly an hour longer than the first Culture being 105 minutes in length. So I guess i’ll be diving in head first and seeing what there is in these 24 tracks.
Production
We have a lot of star producers on here. Metro Boomin contributes on 2 underwhelming beats with the intro and “Emoji A Chain”. Buddha Bless comes with another 2 beats with the bland superstars but the fiery “BBO” (co-produced by Kanye). OG Parker and Deko come with one hell of a beat with “Walk It Talk It”. Unfortunately the beat is ruined by the extremely annoying hook. Pharrell easily comes with the best beat here as the beat for “Stir Fry” is filled with so much god damn personality. Their long time affiliate [Zaytoven] returns with one hell of a spacy beat with “Too Much Jewlery”, Murda Beatz comes with 3 beats as each one is boring and underwhelming, Wheezy comes with “White Sand” which is as forgettable as any other beat here and The Cardo beat on “Open Up” stands out a little bit more but all of the members fail miserably trying to match it. With all of the guest production here, the most common production credit is the Quavo & DJ Durel tag team. Nearly every beat they make with the exception of “Narcos” are so flat and formulaic that I cant really say anything about it. Overall, with the exception of literally 3 beats, every beat is bland, redundant and easily forgettable.
Features
For a 24 track album, there is a necessity for features. Nearly a third of the tracks include a feature but only one performs, 21 Savage…who does a hook. Drake brings a verse that makes him sound like he finally took that half a xan on the plane. I bet you in the 100 mixtapes he dropped that Gucci Mane already released that verse somewhere. Travis Scott sounds boring, Ty Dolla $ign and Big Sean have no chance for redeeming a track at any time ever, Cardi B & Nicki Minaj are sending shots on the same track due to petty competition, Post Malone and Migos never would work anyway and 2 Chainz’ was decent. Yeah….im not a fan of the features.
Performance
Im not going to waste your time…You’re hearing 105 minutes of Migos…enough said.
Tracklist
So….the album is 24 tracks and 105 minutes. Surely, there are amazing albums that are longer than this. To Be Kind, 69 Love Songs and God’s Father just to name a few. This album is the same exact length as “Songs In The Key Of Life” but lets be real…Migos are nowhere near Stevie Wonder. Also, if Migos were better than The Beatles, these 24 tracks would be up to par with the 30 tracks on The White Album but even “Revolution 9” or “Wild Honey Pie” has more entertainment than any 5 track run on this album. Its funny because Drake did a similar thing the same year with Scorpion and even then, it was stylistically split into 2 albums, this is literally one block of adlibs and triplet flows that already gets tiring after track 6.
Favorite Tracks
Ummm…..I guess “Narcos” was pretty good, “BBO” was nice in places too. Honestly, the only track I thoroughly enjoyed was “Stir Fry”. Thats literally the only song that is up to par with anything off of Culture. Yeah…..this is bad.
Verdict
Let this be a lesson, unless you’re versatile enough to do so, please don’t make an album over 100 minutes. Sometimes albums suffer from over saturation but if you cut the album in half, it would be a stronger release. This on the other hand couldn’t make that statement more false because if I cut this into one half, I would probably still give this album a 3 or a 4.
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