XXXTentacion - 17 (2017)
When XXX420T3ntaci0n69 hit the scene with a huge impact earlier this year, he pretty much slipped under my radar until about a month ago when I gave his music a chance.. And I liked it! I didn't love it, didn't hate it, and didn't like a fair bit of what I heard, but there was a lot of stuff I liked, is what I'm trying to say. I knew he was an artist with a variety of music under his belt, but apparently he's also a snake-oil salesman here to sell depression to teenagers with this album that Kendrick Lamar hilariously cosigned. Back in 2000, Deftones released "White Pony" which included the song "Elite", featuring the lyric "You're into depression 'cause it matches your eyes" and I feel like that perfectly describes XXXTentacion's music on this album, which is so incredibly shallow and lyrically worthless, that if he managed to provoke any type of genuine feeling within you, then I'm sure I could sell you a bottle of "refrigerated air" for a high price under the guise of "it's non-GMO, all natural".
On this album, it sounds less like XXXTentacion voicing his thoughts, and more like him playing a character: The edgy, depressed rapper that you can, like, totally relate to in your freshmen year of high school, that reminds your older sibling of some shit that would've come out during the time that they had "To Write Love on Her Arms" in their Top 8 during high school. The only song that even mildly gets a pull on me is "Jocelyn Flores", a song dedicated to a girl he knew who killed herself, and that's fucking heartbreaking, but then you really pay attention to the song, and you see that this poor deceased girl, who this song is named after, only gets a lyric or two directed about her, and completely disregarding the opportunity to talk about her or why she did it, the rest is just XXXTentacion talking about how he wants to die, and that isn't unique, given that pretty much every single fucking song on this album lyrically consists of just that, but phrased absolutely awfully. Take this lyric passage for example: "The pain in my heart just won't end / The words that I find just don't seem to compare / Awaiting my death in the end / Alone, I must seek out the end to begin / So nobody wants death / 'Cause nobody wants life to end", and yeah, I know, you can point out that Anthony Fantano cited that last part, but that was just the tip of the fucking iceberg. "I'm nauseous, I'm dyin' / She ripped my heart right out / Can't find her, someone to— / My eyes are all cried out".. This was a real thing that someone wrote down and felt confident enough in to sing.
Oh yeah, let's touch on that: Pretty much fucking no one on this album can hold a tune aside from Trippie Redd's appearance in "Fuck Love (feat. Trippie Redd)". Almost every other attempt at singing is either intentionally drowned out, or just fucking -awful-. XXXTentacion sounds like a cat being forced into a bath in "Dead Inside (Interlude)". You can say "that makes it genuine" but then it'll hopefully become quickly apparent to you that you wouldn't give a fuck about this album if it were some flavor-of-the-week indie band that Pitchfork would praise for "blunt honesty", but at least you could probably count on that band not to half-ass their album so severely. Most of the songs on here sound like incredibly rough demos for an indie album, typically consisting of just one vocal idea repeated over and over as a musical placeholder, because the producer would surely come in to say "You guys aren't really going to put out a two minute track that's just the chorus repeating over and over, right?" to try to save his own ass from having his name printed on a shitty album, but in this case, it's a shitty NOVELTY album! The novelty, of course, being a rapper making an indie-folk album that essentially sounds like he had "Bullet" by Hollywood Undead playing in his headphones the entire time, because, really, isn't that most of this album? Just that one fucking Hollywood Undead song with the tempo lowered?
To finish this off: This album isn't God-awful as an entire project, there are a few decent bits, but you absolutely cannot fucking deny that it's the audible equivalent of thoughts you had about killing yourself when you were 14 after experiencing your first heartbreak, just to hurt the person that broke your heart. If this truly is entering XXXTentacion's mind, you'll find that instead of the massive, engrossing world he would like it to be perceived as, it's just a cardboard box in a closet of some angsty teenager's bedroom, filled with Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Pierce the Veil CDs that they "outgrew" and find "cringeworthy" now that they've discovered artists they just "completely relate to" like Lil Peep and XXXTentacion, completely unaware that on paper, they're the exact same fucking thing, minus Fall Out Boy's charm and witty lyrics, My Chemical Romance's theatrics, and Pierce the Veil's technicality, or pretty much any of those shitty bands on Tumblr that sell shirts that say shit like "wrists are for bracelets, not for cutting" in an attempt to profit off of self-harm that you make fun of your younger sibling for liking. One day, you might even find your own physical copy of this album in a cardboard box in YOUR closet, and after you take it out, a wave of nostalgia will hit you, and you'll think to yourself "God.. What the fuck was wrong with me?" before cringing at the fact that you shared a link on social media to stream the album in full, which might as well be the soundtrack to Reddit's /r/blunderyears.
5/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
