Westside Gunn, an East Side Rapper from Buffalo, New York, has released the 12th album in his ongoing album series, “Hitler Wears Hermes.” Just from the title alone, you know this isn’t good. Gunn, known for his albums like “Pray For Paris” and his feature on Travis Scott’s “Utopia” on the track, “LOST FOREVER,” has been working on this series of albums since 2014, starting as mixtapes before becoming full studio albums.
Let’s start with the rapping. While Gunn has good flow and some clever lyrics, nothing he says will make me like him. Every other line is either about A: flexing his wealth, B: doing drugs, and C: having sex. Is most rap music like this? Yes, but the way he does it is annoying. Lines like, “You know the cocaine lexicon is extra-long” or “Fiend hit the pipe and said, ‘Word is bond’/ Bracelet so big, I wish I had another arm” aren’t so bad but he keeps doing the same thing over and over again and annoyed me so much. The thing that I do like about his lyrics is that they have random pro wrestling references in them like, “(Dude) took a sniff, ripped his shirt like he Hogan” as a reference to Hulk Hogan. I find these lines weird but funny.
What he raps over isn’t anything interesting either. All of the beats and melodies sound like either someone who got your first keyboard and was playing around with it or someone else’s song that they rap over as a “Sample!” Singing is nice and all, but music comes down to one thing: music! If your music beats or melodies aren’t good, everything else won’t be good. It also doesn’t help that the album does not use drums, a lesser-known form of music that barely anyone uses. You can do good drumless albums, like “Some Rap Songs” by Earl Sweatshirt, but this is not how it is done.
The only song I kind of enjoyed was “055.” The only reason I do is because of the sample that is better than their rapping. It sounds like something I want to listen to rather than this album.
Overall, I liked very little of this album, but that was just my opinion. You can like it if you do. But I would give it a 3/10. Sorry, not sorry.
