Posthumous albums can be very tricky, while controversial. In the past few years, we lost tons of artists especially from the hip-hop community not get to see 30, sometimes drinking age and shit makes me sad every time. Pop Smoke was tragically killed before he even released his official studio debut album but with the help of 50 Cent, Steven Victor, and his mother the album with a few tweaks was released to the public. I wasn't really crazy about but the album, it was enjoyable did very great, hell as I am writing this the album is in the top 100 charts. It even got the old let's make a deluxe version treatment that plagued tons of albums last year.
Now like I said about posthumous albums at the start, another album was announced and it had me worried. majority of the time, labels and/or estate will do these albums cause of profit and I hate it. I'm ok with these types of projects if the album was close to being finished or it was scrapped project that never saw the light of day (EX: Mac Miller with Circles or the leaked version of Ballonerism) but we get songs that were in the rough draft/proofread stage and they add questionable and unnecessary features. A great example is the two of the X's albums or the 2nd Lil Peep album every track was mainly a hook and an idea you kept in the iPhone notes. All you had to do is just add some well-known rapper/singer and bam! record sales through the roof!
"Faith" features range from Kanye, Pusha T, Cudi, Lil Tjay, 42 Dugg, 21, Rick Ross, Future, Dua Lipa (?), Two of the Migos, and Pharell. Doing research, few tracks were pretty much finished and he had in contact with a few of the folks named here, Kanye and Pusha T was a DONDA leftover, LilTajay and he were good friends, and the Dua Lipa does seem odd on paper which I don't blame people. They were fans of each other and this was recorded before he passed on. Other artists as far as I know that I had named, he never did. My curiosity got the best of me and I wanted how they treated his legacy and I'm always down to peep a guest feature from a favorite of mine.
Now. I don't really have much to say about, as far as the music we got here. I personally didn't think they hurt Pop's legacy but this is album not really that good. I found it to be boring and a huge letdown and stepdown from his previous album. My main issue is that few tracks sounded very completed while we got others you can tell they weren't finished. I swear they were certain lines on here that were said a bunch of different times on different tracks, and times Pop Smoke is just mainly in the background and the features are the main attraction. "Faith" does start off strong, "Manslaughter" with a great verse from Rick Ross. "30" with Bizzy Banks is my favorite track, I'm not familiar with Bizzy but it makes me wanna check more of his stuff. These two got great chemistry and a huge shame we will never get more from these two. "Brush Em" I can that being on the next 2k soundtrack or at least sports highlights. "Bout A Millon" I enjoyed the verses from 21 and 42, wished 42 wasn't just on the bride of the song and had a verse.
Rest of the album I just wasn't feeling it all, I try not to be picky with the mixing of songs since I enjoy a lot of stuff from the "cloud rap" scene cause you know how that goes for those tracks but man. Times were Pop's vocals sound like he had a bag full of marbles in his mouth or you couldn't hear him, same with the features too. "Mr. Jones" with Future I had no clue what they were saying and I hardly complain about that shit, Future sounded like he recorded the verse last minute and got the check and left. "Demeanor" with Dua Lipa. What is this? I love Dua Lipa. WHAT IS THIS?! Pop's vocals and singing reminded me of very early Bladee, Dua sounds goofy when she said "You can't say Pop without Soke". It's my least favorite song but it is so bad, that is also good. Track with Cudi could've been on Cudi's last album and the shit with Pharell was way too short and didn't need to be on here.
Final thoughts are is that I hope that we don't get any more albums releases and let the man rest and respect his legacy. It wasn't a huge slap to his face like how the family of X's treated him but I'll be fine if pop unreleased tracks were keep hidden in the vault forever. If his verses were on other people's albums from now on, I wouldn't be against it but I'll still be a bit upset depending on who gets his verses. One posthumous project is the minimum and the max in an artist catalog but we all know all these labels work. welp. RIP THE WOO.
Favorite Tracks: 30, Manslaughter, Bout a Million, Brush Em
Least Favorite Tracks: Demeanor
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