Yeah dude, I think I'm with you. I mean, I'm pretty sure I cried the first time I heard TPAB, but as we've said before, that album is like Ulysses or some shit. Maybe even Finnegan's Wake. It's just a massive undertaking for artist and listener both. It's extremely well done. It's definitely a masterpiece.
But I just listened to "Excuse Me" for like the ninth time today. As brilliant TPAB is, no song on that album has nine spins out of me in one day.
It's so smooth, and you can hear Rocky's growth as a rapper in the switch-ups and double time changes, and he sounds so motherfuckin confident. Then that chorus, it's got the shoegazey feel of so many of the classics on the first two, but I want to call it something else... shoe-gauze. It's just so stoned out and cottonmouthed and lazily tough, like there's nothin to prove by getting all heated. He just has to say very calmly that he's a boss and it's believable.
"I pay very close attention / after that I may my dues an' UUH"
Ha. It's like the "LVL" of this record, and LVL was my favorite track on Long.Live.
This album is fun as hell, having Kanye and Future on board doesn't hurt a thang, and I love the fact that Rocky can do "lite" like such a badass. Songs like L$D and older cuts like Fashion Killah... who else could pull those off without losing some street appeal, or being labeled R&B.. Who? Well, Kanye... Kanye could, and has, deviated that drastically from rap's macho sound.
But if Rocky's pulling off the kind of genre-bending feats that put him at THAT level, then I think I've been underestimating him as an artist.
So yeah. If I had to choose, I'd say ALLA > TPAB at this point. But we all know shif can change.
