Average Rating: 8.9/10
Overall Rating: 7.5/10
1. Intro
2. Breakfast (10/10)
3. Handclaps & Guitars (9/10)
4. Mind Your Manners Ft. Icona Pop (9.5/10)
5. Ray Charles (10/10)
6. Does She Love Me (9/10)
7. Run it Back Ft. Shirazi (7/10)
8. Out To Space Ft. Gordon Voidwell (10/10)
9. Whatever We Want (9/10)
10. Interlude
11. Talking To Myself (8/10)
12. Happening (10/10)
13. Baby Roulette (6/10)
14. 4th Quarter (5/10)
15. Rescue Me Ft. You Me At Six (10/10)
There wasn’t a real consistent decent hip-hop duo to make music since Outkast. The past few years where mainly built on a combination of some decent collaboration albums and poor hip-hop duos. the last few years featured some great collaborations, such as Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne and Methodman and Redman’s Blackout 2, however, those collaborations where just one, or at most two time jobs, there wasn’t a real consistent hip-hop duo since Outkast, now duos are mostly poor, having The Cool Kids as the only good hip-hop duo, and having many duos such as the New Boyz, LMFAO, The Ying Yang Twins and more, all these consistent duos where either mediocre or poor, all of them are far from the level of The Cool Kids, little than Outkast, however, how will this newer, younger duo, Chiddy Bang do with their long awaited debut “Breakfast”, did the album manage to keep them going as a good duo, or does it show that they belong with the many other, poorer hip-hop duos?
Breakfast kept it simple concept wise. It had the usual debut album concept, which was just a simple showcase of everything the artist or the group can do, and personally I think that’s the best way to go with a debut album, because a debut album mainly needs to attract fans for the more advanced music, and if the listener didn’t listen to everything the artist or group can do, they will be skeptical on buying more albums from that artist or group, and in Chiddy Bang’s case, they jumped onto many styles lyrically and production wise, which made a very diverse yet familiar album, which really gave the album such a great, smooth and an entertaining style to listen to through sixteen tracks.
Chiddy Bang concentrated on one major style on most of the album, which was punchline rap, Chiddy Bang rapped some very strong and well crafted punchlines in many different styles of production, and they mainly concentrated on new school production and old school production through the punchline tracks.
“Breakfast” was a strong track, it had some very clever lines in a smooth flow which was all tied together with a mixture of an old school beat and a new school beat. “Mind your Manners” was a highlight of the album, it had a guitar based beat, a strong hook and some very clever lyrics.“Ray Charles” was the first single of the album, and it was a near perfect track, it had some amazing 1930s jazz style production and some of the strongest lyrics on the entire album. “Happening” was a punchline track which came out of pure happiness, it had some strong positive punchlines and a fast, positive beat as well, and “4th Quarter” was one of the last tracks on the album, it had some extremely strong punchlines, probably the best on the album, however, comparing to the punchlines to the production on the track was a disaster, the production was fairly poor, it was a basic hip-hop beat and it really ruined the album’s good mood.
A less familiar style with the duo was the more emotional style. The album had a decent amount of tracks
which stood out emotionally, and some of those emotional tracks actually stand out as some of the best tracks of the album.
“Does She Love Me?” was a song that questioned love; It was one of the smartest and one of the most meaningful tracks on the album. “Out To Space” was a very motivational track, it had very motivational production and some self-motivating lyrics as well, it was one of the best tracks on the album. “Baby Roulette” was a track that was mainly about questioning keeping a baby, it was an emotional track, but it had a poor hook and poor production which really threw me off the mood, and “Rescue Me”, which was a rock inspired track about the need of love and its importance, You Me at Six provided the production and the hook, which really made a huge difference, it turned an emotional rap track into an emotional rap/rock track, which is a good thing most of the time, and a perfect way to finish the album.
However, even with the album’s heavy concept and it’s strong, diverse but familiar music, the album did have some downfalls, some tracks, such as “Talking To Myself” or “Run It Back” had poorly constructed hooks which did not fit the tracks and just felt like they were forced on those track so they can feel more radio friendly. Another problem some songs on the album had was the production, mainly tracks like “Baby Roulette” or “4th Quarter” suffered from poor production, which made both of these tracks sound broken and disjointed.
Chiddy Bang’s Breakfast was a strong enough album to be seen as a great debut and a great collaboration. It didn’t really cross any limits or any lines, but it had some decent music though. The concept was strong and simple and the music was almost on par with the concept, the production was almost stellar and the album’s general flow was very strong, however the album suffered from random hooks and poor production in some cases, which lowered the album’s quality, but even with those errors the album managed to be filled with great tracks to make an overall strong, but not a significantly strong album. Breakfast was a good enough album to make me believe that there is a duo that might be able to compete with today’s most powerful duo, The Cool Kids.
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