It’s a lot of pressure to live up to the title of “the next big thing”. It’s hard to shine brighter than your hype when you’ve been called the future of anything. People treat you different, people see you different, but most importantly, people wait to see you fail.
A few years ago the internet buzzed at the potential of a young rapper from Atlanta who mixed smooth braggadocio with a nerd Image. B.o.B was up NEXT. Bob had an Eminem feature out the gate, he even had a hit single with a relatively unknown crooner named Bruno Mars. Unfortunately, the crown Bob was aiming to grab was never given to him, mostly because his music never really progressed. Also he apparently got a little too woke.
B.o.B was the next big thing, but now he’s Flat Earth truther Numero Uno.
So with that, I pressed play on his new tape The Upside Down.
Admittedly I wasn’t expecting too much listening to this, I was never really a fan of “hey look at how good I am at rapping nerd shit” rap. Luckily Bobby Ray has replaced Nerd Rap with conspiracy raps, and I can almost get down with this.
This album starts off pretty innocent, but as time progresses you start to see how “woke” this nigga really is. He starts off like “hey those girls posing with your bottles don’t like you” and ends up saying “bones don’t turn into Oil”
At one point he says “it’s like the Truman show, except I’m the director and the cast” ..so you’re creating a fake world while living in it?”
Listening to this tape is like smoking a blunt with someone you kinda know that you find out too late is crazy. You go into it nodding until it’s too late to notice that they’ve pulled out “proof” the earth is flat. Now you’re stuck talking to someone you’re afraid to disagree with because their eyes are too crazy.
The beats are ok enough, the rhymes are ok enough, but it’s clear that Bob has been reading articles on the wrong side of the internet. You’d think being schooled by Neil Degrasse Tyson would wake him up but it seems that he’d need a punch from Mike Tyson to bring him down to earth.
I give The Upside Down 2 Pages of the Willie Lynch Papers out of 5.