Run back to about this time last year: Wiz Khalifa was set to drop his debut studio album Rolling Papers, and expectations were inching toward the peak. His Cabin Fever mixtape carried those same sounds we were all familiar with, “Black and Yellow,” “The Race” and “Roll Up” laid out the foundation in the prior days to acclaim, and the debate on whether Wiz would sell out his sounds on the project was well in the foundry between Prince of the City: Welcome To Pistolvania devotees and the surge of virgin ears writhing to hear more after capturing Wiz on “Black and Yellow.” Then the album came, debuting at the two slot on Billboard charts, though fizzling out quickly after receiving an average of C-rate reviews, making it the quintessential anticlimax.
Rolling Papers was a ghost town of an album come summer, “Black and Yellow” left as nothing more than a stale ringtone people were too lazy to swap out, and Wiz’ more of a marijuana media cartoon, boasting heavy tour attendance, though surviving mostly on his chronic persona conveyed through the myriad webisodes of decadence and excess in smoke-filled rooms. Mac & Dre Go To High School with Snoop Dogg is bested by a bedtime story, and outside the brief string of Curren$y and Big Sean collaborations we saw last fall, Wiz was ultimately dubbed a hiatus, leaving the standard for Taylor Allderdice as either a riposte, or swan song.
This is where Taylor Allderdice proves to be the prior. The most essential listen on the tape is the interview snippet on “Guilty Consciece” where Wiz acknowledges the lukewarm product in Rolling Papers, because the concedence echoes into the shape of the sounds throughout the tape:
“Rolling Papers…maybe I would have done it different. You know, Rolling Papers was like a learning experience like everything else was…”
The simplest level of deconstruction reveals the Allderdice tape for what it is: an alphabet soup of his corpus. Tracks like “T.A.P.,” “Guilty Conscience” and “The Code” take the tones to Wiz’ earlier days, mirroring the Prince tapes and Show and Prove sounds, while bud-hazed “California” and “The Grinder” run in the Star Power vein. You get that familiar Kush & OJ chiller in “Never Been part II,” and, most importantly, the maturity of Wiz’ Rolling Papers mode in “Amber Ice” and “Mia Wallace,” which exhibit his ability to metaphorically return home while still carrying the new methodology. Revival seems the underlying drop, though adaptation is the true philosophy, as everything of Allderdice is kin to its predecessors, but far from a carbon copy.
While Juicy J is a major contributor throughout the tape with four cameos, you could stretch his contribution from more than just bars; from Mystic Stylez in ’95 to the acclaimed Most Known Unknown to the string of lesser-acknowledged mixtapes, Juicy J’s run the gambit of underground to innovator to Academy Award winning artist to a legend on the decline, and, in some ways, is a mentor in one way or another. An even greater homecoming on Allderdice is the return of the masons Wiz’s built his career with: Big Jerm, Cardo and Sledgren are credited (at least in my opinion) as having crafted some of Wiz’ most memorable tracks alongside the I.D. Labs camp, and if you give a quick check, none of these names, save for I.D. Labs, had any fingerprints on Rolling Papers. The remarriage of genius on Allderidice is what gives it such a familiarity, and fills the void between beat and emcee that Wiz let himself fall victim to.
The success of Taylor Allderdice is that it fires toward all degrees of Wiz fans, satisfying the lacks while simultaneously giving appeal to other faces of his style and promoting his evolution. It’s a multitasking mixtape, and most importantly, conveys Wiz’ awareness of his wavering status musically in hip-hop. If Rolling Papers was for the fame, Taylor Allderdice returns to the roots, purely about the music, and while it does sway toward the idea that he’s best shown through mixtapes, the ultimate conveyance is that he’s still making music, and doing it well.
SumOlogy: the necessity.
4.0/5.0
Follow JT Langley on Twitter: GlantonSlang
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