Pusha T - It's Almost Dry (April 22, 2022) Album • Page 3

Holy shit, this is his best work. Beats are CRAZY (I honestly can't decide who "wins" between Pharrell and Kanye, they both bring some of their best production in years to this), rapping is of course great and it was so fucking cool to have Malice on the last song. This is basically Daytona on steroids to me (or I guess cocaine), I loved that album but this one is even better

Might be my rap AOTY so far, it's either this or Denzel

 

Yeah thought this was great

 

Call My Bluff is actually really cool.

 

I don’t know if I would say that this is better than Daytona, but I really like it. If Kanye absolutely has to open his mouth on this record I would appreciate if he didn’t record himself using a tin can.

 

So No Malice is Malice again huh

 

Kevlar in this Balenciaga jacket lining

 

I didn’t think anything would top Vince for me as far as rap goes but this is like..pretty special. Maybe I just forgot how much I used to love Pusha but this is the kind of album that would’ve had me flipping out back in college. No skips on this thing whatsoever and just amazing from track to track imo. I think he definitely topped Daytona

 

Pharrell washed Ye on this one tbh. Those “Open Air” flutes are pure summertime.

 

Wouldn’t say that personally, they were pretty equal on the beats to me

 

Yeah for as much as Kanye has declined as a rapper (and as a person), his production is still pretty good.

 

I can’t think of a better way to end this record than this Malice verse, I should go listen to his Jesus album at some point

 

My favorites are "Brambleton", "Smokers", "Call My Bluff", "Open Air" so that's 4 for 4 Pharrell. Next one after that is "Diet Coke", but I consider that an 88-Keys beat.

 

Most of my hip-hop intake this yar has been less polished than this (Conway, Benny, Earl, billy woods) but I'll be damned if this isn't one of my favorite projects of the year

 

Dreamin of the Past is the best beat

 

this is great, listened to it like 3 times in a row doing deliveries tonight

 

Yeah Dreamin of the Past had me smiling so hard when I heard that beat. Absolute vintage Kanye, and I believe it's the first song he's had the sole producer credit on since like Otis

 

this is amazing, production is the best rap shit I’ve heard in forever

 

Dreamin of the Past is straight up transcendently good and fun and not to be, like, mean, but I wish ppl would find another way of sardonically criticizing production/mixing than regurgitating the “sounds like it was recorded in a tin can” line bc I’m sorry it’s just an eye roll from me at this point. it rarely adequately describes what is actually happening sonically imo. and if you’re going to criticize production I think you ought to be as sincere and precise about it as you can manage to be, because it is an art in itself and is not necessarily beholden to sounding pristine or any one way at all, and too often people criticize shit in a drive-by fashion like they’re speaking some objective truth and it’s literally something that can be reduced to taste (or sometimes maybe even the fact that they listen on a low quality setup). I do find it equally annoying when someone goes through the trouble to air legitimate grievances they have in a way that they clearly actually tried to put some thought into, and then people come through with the “lol guess everyone is a mixing genius these days” takes which are equally as uncharitable and dumb imo (this happened to me in the Camp Cope thread from my perspective to an extent). idk. I guess I am just pretty consistently frustrated with certain ways in which this site tends to approach conversations and disagreements and I don’t think it’s normal lol. but now I am considering with this tangent that maybe I’m the one making it not-normal this time and if so, my bad. my intentions are to be constructive tho for whatever it’s worth lol. edit: also want to make it clear this is less to directly point fingers at whoever said that in here and more that it’s just something I have seen in several threads recently and I guess I just long for more thoughtful criticism.

personally, I love the crazy dry and in your face verse from ye tbh, it sounds like a throwback to some MBDTF vocal production (I think Blame Game is mostly what I am thinking of). it’s very fitting for a song called “Dreamin of the Past” that’s built off a kinda old school soul sample. and that hook is seriously just everything to me, it’s one of my favorites I have heard all year.

 

I don't think it's that deep. It just sounds bad.

 

He’s got a few solo on Daytona

 

I’ve always liked Pusha T in small doses, but this is the first project I really like from him start to finish.

 

well, like I said, my post was meant to be less about this specific instance and more an observed trend over my years of posting. so whether or not you think the part sounds bad is kind of besides the point imo of what I was trying to say. it seriously feels like the same exact scenarios play out over and over whenever conversations veer into talking about production on this site imo. it feels very tired to me.

 

For the record when I said Kanye sounded like he recorded his parts in a tin can, I was talking about his vocals not the production

 

Main problem with kanyes verse on dreaming of the past is that it 1. Sounds like he stitched it together bar by bar and it's not even good or clever and 2. Sticks out of the mix by being so compressed, v much like they're overcompensating for the poor production quality that he has no excuse for