Sean Sharp's Diary

Listen 1: Yeah, looking forward to the album. Based off this alone, you can tell there is more evolution to take place for JID. No stagnation. The end of Behold is something else. Listen 2: So fun and crazy. Can't wait for the full project. Not wanting to comment too much on this since it is just the appetizer before the main course. 1 Week Later: The more I listen, the more I hear things I missed on the first few play throughs. Absolute blast for the build up for this album.

Listen 1: Feels old and new all at the time time. Features are excellent. Unique flows and beats and choruses. Original front to back. The bars make you cover your mouth. Listen 2: Fun. Some of these songs do sound slightly alike with the horns but still fun, front to back. That said, there has always been something about Pusha T that has stopped his music from going to the next level for me. I don't want to say it sounds the same, cuz it doesn't. It might just be him. Like if you took these beats and had Tyler or Kendrick rap over everything instead, I may like it better. No hate against Pusha. Dude is still great and love how snarly he sounds. Probably just a personal preference on vocal tone. 1 Week Later: Although it never breaks through with anything mind bogglingly good, Clipse is the definition of consistently solid. Not one bad or even average song on this record. At the same time, nothing on here blew my socks off. Works extremely well as an album and fun to listen to individual songs as well.

Listen 1: There's like two skits in here where, I'm assuming, Joyner had people talk shit about how he's making another album about ADHD and how he needs to grow up and get over it. I think he's misinterpreting people's hate or criticism of it. It's not that he should grow up, but his style has not changed that dramatically and that's what people are tired of. There are definitely some songs on here that weren't copies of the first ADHD but the headlining tracks (~2-7 or so) are all his bread and butter which most people I think are tired of. I am too. As you get deeper in the album, there are some much poppier different songs that I don't really remember being on the original ADHD and so I have to give props to those. Listen 2: Yes, it's pretty long. Yes, there isn't much reinventing the wheel of any kind. Yes, nothing is really even that great. But, Joyner does consistently put out formulaic songs. None of these are outright bad in any certain way. The production on all of them I have heard a million times before but there is still enough here where I like this album as a whole. I've always considered Imagine Dragons this way (probably because I grew up on them), but Joyner fits this bill as well. Just an album with a whole ton of singles. The theme of ADHD comes and goes whenever Joyner feels like it seems. You could take out the skits and few direct lines referring to ADHD and this would still be a fully packed album. It just doesn't really matter in terms of the entire scope of the project. 1 Week Later: Hard to say more than what I've already said about the project. Joyner has a pretty formulaic approach to making music which obviously has had it's success. It does sound good at times as well. However, for an album this long, it does have it's down sides and head scratching moments considering the theme. Overall, it's a fun listen if you're looking for some aggressive but upbeat rap with some pop songs sprinkled in here and there.

Disc 1 Only Listen 1: Alex's music feels like it made in a lab with how perfectly crafted it is for the radio. Some of these songs feel aimed for late teenagers, who need their music too, but some of this is very good. Eternity starts it off with the best track and then there are some few other decent ones scattered around but compared to the first chapter, this does feel slightly like a deluxe version rather than a whole second companion album. Listen 2: He is very much so in that genre of singers like Lewis Capaldi, George Ezra, etc... but he might be my favorite. I'm a sucker for a good ballad but it seems a lot of other singers in the his vocal range and tone are shoehorned into those dramatic ballads trying to be the next big ballad singer like Adele. This brings in some more energy that I don't get the same taste from those other guys. I still stand by Chapter 1 of this album being better overall, but this one does hit some high highs. 1 Week Later: His voice is perfectly golden, it's hard not to like. I do enjoy when artists try melodies or keys that aren't the typical C Major/Minor and there is a few on here but they just don't sound great to me.

Listen 1: Very bouncy. The middle of the album is chaotic, it tends to blur together but the start and last few tracks are extremely memorable. Maybe I'm making this connection since I just wrote my final review for JACKBOYS 2, but this album feels like Tyler's spin on that heavily electronic rap that Travis and Playboi Carti play around in. Obiviously much different, still though, this probably brings the same feeling to some that other's experience with Carti. Listen 2: There is something about this album where I want to add every song on it and simultaneously none of them. This may be in part due to a large majority of them all having a similar sound, which is good for the cohesion of the overall project, but means the sacrifices are the individuality of some of the songs. This is a textbook album I would prefer to listen as a whole than any single song. 1 Week Later: You can tell that this project was just a fun side excursion for Tyler. It doesn't have the same weight that a lot of his other work does but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it either. I'm sure at concerts some of these tracks will be an absolute blast and I think as a project overall, it works extremely well stylistically. I don't need an album to be super serious to be good either but this just feels like a fun Tyler album, which he has given us before, just without some of the more meaningful moments.

Listen 1: The kind of music that kills in a dirty industrial club. Fun listen but I think Jigitz has some evolving to do overall. Songs a bit generic as far as the structure goes and repetitive as well. He has great ideas with some killer sound design and this is all needed in a new artists creation of their own sound so no hate here at all. Listen 2/1 Week Later: This is enjoyable and fun. Not entirely groundbreaking but you can really see Jigitz putting his all into it. It's hopefully a matter of time until this guy keeps this up and starts putting out some top tier tracks.

Initial: Nothing revolutionary. Doesn't matter though, they have a style and they stick to their guns and they're damn good at it. Teetering into 80's pop rock, it's just a lot of fun to put it plainly. Dudes voice is nothing special but it just reminds me of a better time (even though I am not nostalgic for their old music whatsoever). Their music just reek of 2010's pop rock in an alternative universe Maroon 5. 1 Week Later: Kind of a guilty pleasure album I suppose? I listen to this and hear nothing new or what bratty people may call "inspired" but I simply just like the sound. Some of the lyrical choices make me question the lead singer's decisions as a human being but overall no harm no foul with it.

Glad that they are still evolving as a whole. It really seemed like during the Pandemic that they were gonna turn into a suburban band that didn't have any interesting new changes to their sound. Their fan based showed that with the hate towards Scaled and Icy. Personally, I do like that album a lot and don't really fancy Clancy that much. That said, Clancy at least showed they were still putting in the effort to do new stuff and Breach follows right in that trend. While that puts a smile on my face, I find Breach much better than Clancy and the song writing and diverse soundscapes make this an easy listen as a whole with some specific bangers here and there throughout the album.

Love love love the idea, pretty good on the execution. Despite being only 49 minutes, this feels like it runs 20 minutes too long. The precision and dedication to making these '80s beats and instrumentals so crisp deserve props. Tons of different moments on here are distinctly '80s but lodged in modern-day production to a perfect degree. The only gripe I have is that, due to sticking to such a rigid time capsule of style, it runs a bit long. If you go back and listen to a lot of 80s records that are inspired by this, and I don't mean the greats from the 80s. You will find albums that either start to get a bit boring or branch out and experiment. I think some more experimentation would have done this some good in the latter half. Overall, I do respect Doja even going for some of those slightly out of tune notes from the time period as well. While they didn't stick around for very long in popular music, they show true attention to detail and talent when pulling inspiration from 40 years ago.

It's good. Suffers quite heavily from being like half released by the time the full album came out, but still, the entirety of it is good, especially if it's all new to you. Home is a classic, and several other songs have catchy feel-good melodies and ideas that I can appreciate on any given day. It will be interesting to see if they just keep copy and pasting this formula or try to evolve in some way because much more of this will definitely become a bit repetitive.

Prime example of a project that goes all in on the pizzazz of art and not going for much of a mainstream sound. Using tons of electronic elements and experimenting with transitions and unique vocal inflections, REAPER has been cooking in the cave since "heady". With albums like this, I love it as a whole but have a hard time relistening to tracks individually, which sucks cuz I don't always have time for a whole project (even an EP sometimes, like this, even though it still clocks in at 25 mins). The last album I felt this way about was "Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You" by Ethel Cain. There is such a distinct connection to me when an album hits in nearly every way it needs to, but I know it's almost like a soundtrack for itself if that makes sense. Like you can listen to some of the songs standalone, and some may be completely fine, and you could never need to relate them to the whole project, but they would come together so much more. "SHARK" hits that nail on the head. "HYDRA", the opening track, is the most standalone song on the project, but still tidies the whole idea of the EP up in a bow. You get the general gist, but in order to really appreciate the EP, you have to listen to the whole thing. The sound design on this is so crisp. Welcome back REAPER, always glad to have you.

Yeah, he definitely landed on his feet here. This renaissance of music with physical instruments has been interesting here in the 2020's as synthesizers and samples have become more balanced with other instruments. Ruel falls right into this "correction" in pop music and his does it pretty well. A lot of what makes this great comes down to a few songs as there are a few songs on here I would call generic, but the ones that do stick out, stick out well. Only Ever, Wild Guess, I Can Die Now, and Kicking My Feet and do a pretty fantastic job and making his vocals pop while maintaining a simple instrumental catalog. A huge part of this is also due to some crisp mixing to make sure each part of the album pops when it needs to. I'm not usually an audiophile in that regard, but for some reason, I'm appreciating the mixing here a lot.

It'll be hard for BENEE to ever live up to FIRE ON MARZZ for me, but she has found her footing over 6 years later. BENEE's style has seemed to slowly shift closer to a more traditional pop sound. Or the opposite has happened, and pop music has inched closer to her. One or the other. Either way, this still has some pizazz. Her ability to write melodies that stick out like a sore thumb, but in a good way, is remarkable. Almost like artists who can write catchy lyrics without rhyming. There's another path to success that people like BENEE drive towards. On the other hand, some of the lyrics here may feel dated in the future. Even though we live in 2025, I don't like being reminded of it every time I listen to a song. Not to say something can't be a sign of the times, but it has to do with literal lyrics. The song "Sad Boiii" is fine, but reading "Boiii" will definitely be something I look back on in 40 years to age it.

I want to call this "stripped back," but it's still rather abrasive with the detailed complexion of instruments. Compared to his last two albums, there is a definite simplification in the production side of things, emphasizing traditional instruments. Aries has always had a great ability to create some slamming production that complements his binary vocal style. His last two albums are among my all-time favorites, and so it was always going to be challenging to live up to them. While I still consider this album good, even great, I can't help but feel disappointed that it didn't live up to his previous albums in my eyes.

Over time, Louis has only become more engaging in his unique brand of dance music. There's a 3-man weave of groovy rhythm, popping vocals, and sparkling production constantly at work, and it pays off pretty hard. I would appreciate a bit of a pump on the brakes here and there, just to feel a switch up in tempo. The album does suffer from the pretty common issue of songs blending together at points, but you'll keep bopping your head through each one of them. In comparison to his previous album or even his early work, it's easy to see the vision he had all along and how far he has come in fleshing out something that is unmistakably Louis Futon.

Very happy with how Tommy Richman has so easily found his groove. An artist who blew up by just being an artist. Listening to his albums, you can tell that he hasn't been searching for a big hit, yet it found him with MILLION DOLLAR BABY. His unique blend of old and new R&B feels so hot to the touch. Traditionally, his vocals would get dogged on by a lot of mainstream pop fans who may expect perfect vocals. It works in its own right in his space. Unique vocals work particularly well in certain genres because the instruments surrounding them complement them effectively. WORLDS APART* is just a prime example of instrumentals that are made for his voice.