[powerpress]
The Album Effect episode 20 reviews Kamikaze by Eminem, Queen by Nicki Minaj, Watching Movies with the Sound Off by Mac Miller, and a special listener submission from MC & DJ @rabbidarkside for his project and album, Radio Activity by The Hues Brothers, plus more. Hosted by Manny, Nick, Dave, and Britt.
Check out and listen to Radio Activity by The Hues Brothers here.
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Episode 20 Albums:
Kamikaze (2018)
Eminem
The only artist to have nine consecutive number one albums on the Billboard charts, Eminem is America’s best-selling musician of the 2000s. The product of an unstable home in a working-class Detroit neighborhood, Marshall Mathers III first began pursuing a rap career as a teenager. His first album, the independently released Infinite, didn’t get much attention, but a second-place finish in the 1997 Rap Olympics competition drew the interest of Interscope Records CEO Jimmy Iovine, who introduced his work to Dr. Dre. After signing with Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment, Eminem released The Slim Shady LP, which introduced the mainstream to his Shady alter ego that would go on to define much of his most popular work.
Eminem’s tenth studio album, Kamikaze, is the follow-up to 2017’s polarizing Revival, a commercially successful but critically divisive work. Released with no pre-promotion, other than a 15-second social media teaser, Kamikaze debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and garnered Eminem’s highest number of streams in a single week. The album’s cover art was immediately recognizable to old-school hip-hop fans, as it re-imagines the cover of the Beastie Boys’ seminal 1986 album, Licensed to Ill. Featuring guest appearances from Royce da 5’9″ and Jessie Reyez, among others, Kamikaze quickly gained attention for a number of diss tracks, taking aim at everyone from Machine Gun Kelly to Iggy Azalea to Migos. Kamikaze received generally more positive reviews than its predecessor, with some critics hailing it as a return to form for Eminem, though others were critical of his use of homophobic slurs and constant disparaging of the current generation of rap stars.
Queen (2018)
Nicki Minaj
Onika Maraj began creating the series of characters that would make up her Nicki Minaj persona as a child in New York City. Born in Trinidad and Tobago but raised in Queens, she originally developed the alter egos that would appear throughout her work as a means of escaping a difficult family life. Initially set on a career as an actress, she turned to music in the early 2000s, joining Brooklyn group Full Force.
Solo songs that Minaj uploaded to her MySpace page got her signed to Dirty Money Entertainment, where she released her first mixtape in 2007. However, her rap career truly began to take off when Lil Wayne brought her to his Young Money label, shortly followed by a memorable guest verse on Kanye West’s “Monster.” Minaj released Pink Friday, her first solo album, in 2010 when she introduced many of her alter egos to the masses, including the soft-spoken Harajuku Barbie character and male persona “Roman Zolanski,” which has sometimes been compared to Eminem’s “Slim Shady” persona.
In 2018, Minaj released Queen, her first album since 2014’s The Pinkprint. The album debuted at number 2, and at 128.7 million streams, led to her strongest ever week for streaming. With guest appearances by Future, The Weeknd, Lil Wayne and Ariana Grande, among others, Queen features not only Minaj’s signature animated rap, but also dabbles with pop, reggae, dancehall and trap elements. The album also contains a number of homages to the rapper’s influences, including a duet on “Coco Chanel” with Foxy Brown, who Minaj has long cited as a significant inspiration, as well as her own take on The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Just Playing (Dreams)” titled “Barbie Dreams.”
Overall, the album received mixed reviews, with some praising Minaj’s lyrical cleverness and ability to adapt to a changing musical landscape, while others criticized her reliance on “diss songs” and felt the album didn’t have enough substance to justify its 19-song length.
Watching Movies with the Sound Off (2013)
Mac Miller
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, rapper and producer Mac Miller took an interest in music at a very early age. Originally aspiring to be a singer, he began pursuing a rap career at the age of 14 and released his first mixtape at 15-years-old. After meeting with Benjy Grinberg while working with Wiz Khalifa at ID Labs, he signed to Grinberg’s Rostrum Records in 2010. First studio album Blue Slide Park was released the following year and debuted at number one, the first independent album to achieve this feat since Tha Dogg Pound’s Dogg Food in 1995.
Coming off mixtape Macadelic, Miller released his second studio album, Watching Movies with the Sound Off in 2013. The album’s title was a reference to Miller’s tendency to play movies on mute in the studio while he recorded, with the rapper saying that films often served as visual inspiration for his music. The album featured a number of notable guests, including Schoolboy Q, Tyler, the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt and Jay Electronica.
Critically praised for its psychedelic hip-hop and strong production – handled primarily by Miller himself via pseudonym Larry Fisherman – the album was named to a number of year-end ‘Best Of’ lists from publications including Complex, Rolling Stone and XXL.
Miller described Watching Movies with the Sound Off as a very personal work and estimated that over 400 songs were recorded before paring it down to the album’s final 16 tracks. Throughout the album, he referenced his experiences with substance abuse and depression, a struggle that would eventually overtake his life, leading to his death in 2018 at the age of 26.
