Was Roddy Ricch's "Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial" rich with good music?
After dropping a series of successful projects in the past two years, Compton’s own Roddy Ricch comes through in 2019 dropping his debut studio album “Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial.” The album looks to build off the momentum Roddy Ricch has gathered from his previous two projects, the first “Feed tha Streets” which dropped in 2017 and the second “Feed Tha Streets II” released in 2018. Roddy Ricch has been generating some buzz before the release of the album, releasing three singles. The first two, “Big Stepper” and “Start Wit Me” featuring Gunna were released in October, while the third, “Tip Toe” featuring A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie was released in late November. However, two of biggest sources of Roddy’s buzz before the release of the album was his presence on the Mustard hit song, “Ballin’” which came out in the summer as well as the speculation around who would be the mystery feature on his song “Antisocial” which hasn’t been released despite being listed on the original tracklist before the album’s release. Minus the mystery feature, Roddy’s debut album stands at 43 and a half minutes, with features from Gunna, Lil Durk, Meek Mill, Mustard, Ty Dolla $ign and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie across the sixteen tracks listed. How Ricch is Roddy with talent? Let’s find out!
Categories
The songs on this album divided into lanes that are prevalent throughout the project and scored on a 1.5 scale. (0 = trash, .5 = not for me, 1 = good, 1.5 = a standout)
Melody Ricch
Roddy Ricch demonstrates his melodic vocals over bass-driven beats.
• “Intro” (.5)
• “The Box” (.5)
• “Start wit Me” ft. Gunna (1)
• “Moonwalkin” ft. Lil Durk (.5)
• “Big Stepper” (.5)
• “Peta” ft. Meek Mill (1)
• “Roll Dice” (.5)
• “Tip Toe” ft. A Boogie Wit da Hoodie (.5)
• “War Baby” (1)
Somber Ricch
Roddy Ricch shows us what he can do with his vocals over beats driven by a variety of string instruments
• “Perfect Time” (.5)
• “Gods Eyes” (1)
• “Boom Boom Room” (.5)
• “High Fashion” ft. Mustard (1)
• “Bacc Seat” ft. Ty Dolla $ign (1)
• “Prayers to the Trap God” (1)
Skits
• “Elyse’s Skit” (.5)
Must Listen Songs
The concept of Must Listen songs are the songs that would give the best overview of the album as a whole. Songs that stand out for reasons to be described in the pending descriptions of the songs.
“Peta” ft. Meek Mill
Produced by Nils and OZ, track eight on Roddy Ricch’s debut album is a flute driven melody, that increases in intensity with the background guitar and bass. Roddy does his thing on his verse, however, the story of the song is Meek Mill’s impressive verse to go along with his somewhat catchy flow on the hook.
Final Review
My impressions from Roddy Ricch’s debut album, “Excuse Me For Being Antisocial” is a mixed bag. Firstly, I appreciate how Roddy was able to create a cohesive body of work that carried out the same calm vibe that gave off somber vibes at times throughout. I would also like to applaud Roddy’s selection of features like Meek Mill and Lil Durk who complimented that vibe well. However, the album’s quality felt dry as if something was missing throughout most of the songs. This issue comes from the lack of adlibs throughout many songs like “Intro,” “Big Stepper” and others. To explain further, for the most part, Roddy chose to show off his impressive vocal range and while that came across strongly, his flow’s pauses didn’t do much to impress me, especially on some beats that weren’t infectious to the ear. Essentially, this album gave us bland beats, with empty vocal spaces which isn’t a trait in a song that pushes the listener to keep listening to a song. The problem multiplies in magnitude when we focus on how the content of each song didn’t do much to set Roddy apart from the status quo of Hip-Hop. If you’re going to have such long pauses in between lines, you need to be saying something really profound for it to work, and we honestly didn’t get much of anything that was profound. With all this being said the momentum you expect from a body of work from song to song, simply wasn’t there leaving me to just feel an astounding “eh” throughout. A fix for this would be either picking beats with more moving parts such as the beat on “Nascar,” a song off his last project, “Feed Tha Streets II” or simply speeding up his flow. Either way, I’m not sure another project such as this one would be a sustainable style going forward.
Scoring
Raw Score: The number of good songs on a project versus the overall amount. Songs must have a 1 or above to be counted.
Quality Score: The total amount of points accumulated over the total amount of songs.
Playback value: The resonance an album is perceived to have if played again in full. Scale out of 5.
Raw Score: 7/15
Quality Score: 11.5/15
Playback Value: 2/5
Go out and listen to Roddy Ricch’s “Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial” wherever you listen to your music. Also, don’t forget to check out OldMilk’s Instagram page and Twitter (@Oldmilk_co) for more Hip-Hop Album Reviews, The DJ 500K Playlist, The OldMilk Radar and more! Don’t Know it? OldMilk Does!