By Martin Castro (The Cascade) – Email
Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) member Jay Rock’s 90059 is as hard-hitting a project as I expected it to be — although it may fly under the radar, given the fact that just about every member of TDE has released a project since Jay Rock’s debut, 2011’s Follow Me Home.
A main feature of 90059 is that Jay Rock’s flow is consistently delivered in a cold, aggressive, unflinchingly passionate manner over percussion-heavy beats, with prominent bass and snares. “Necessary” opens the record up with a musical backdrop that quickly goes from a relaxed, L.A-flavoured jam to a more oppressive trap-backed, slightly dissonant track.
“Easy Bake” is perhaps the best track on the record because of its progression. Right out of the gate, Jay Rock’s delivery is more passionate, almost delivered in a series of lines yelled rather than rapped. This culminates in Jay Rock and Kendrick Lamar going back and forth, bar-for-bar. Jay Rock, although audibly strained, holds his own against the arguably more prolific rapper. But the feature of this track that puts it in contention for the best on the album comes at the tail-end of it, as the beat stops short and we hear: “This is WTOP Radio and I’m your host, DJ Turn-Up … Now bitch if you’re pushin’ up the freak with your orangutan-lookin’ ass, take some advice and bang SZA ya flat-foot bitch.” The track immediately turns into a smooth, slightly compressed, slow-soul jam. And out of the helter-skelter left by her intro, SZA contributes what I consider to be the most impressive and resonating feature of the entire project — and it’s not even rapped, it’s sung. SZA’s interlude gives way to a more down-to-earth Jay Rock, and his last verse is delivered in a fashion almost as smooth as SZA’s soul.
“Wanna Ride” is also a stand-out track — less so than “Easy Bake” —z thanks to Isiah Rashad, who contributes a verse that ultimately works much better with the slow, R&B–influenced production featured in the track. Rashad’s flow is completely flawless; there’s a sense of confidence and control present that speaks volumes about how much the rapper has grown since his beginings.
“90059” is where Jay Rock shines by himself. He raps over a disorienting beat, in a way reminiscent of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, before reining in his purposefully sloppy flow and honing it into a more concentrated attack.
“Vice City,” the record’s biggest single, is snugly saved away in the middle of the record. And the track deserves an entire review of its own, as every member of Black Hippy (Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q) spit their best verses on the entire record, all of them adopting a more-or-less similar rhythm, but completely obliterating the music. Any doubts about Black Hippy’s skill is silenced by the end of the record.
90059 is only the latest in a series of quite honestly killer records released by TDE in the past couple of years, starting with Ab-Soul’s Control System in 2012, which started a windfall of records that included good kid, M.A.A.D city, Isiah Rashad’s Civilia Demo, Schoolboy Q’s Oxymoron, SZA’s Z, Ab-Soul’s These Days, and most recently, To Pimp A Butterfly. With a host of more records set for release in the near future, TDE seems to be doing everything right.
