Yo Gotti - I Am ALBUM REVIEW

For quite some time now, the underground scene in the south has quietly been very popular. Nowadays in this new trap rap era, it's become even bigger seeing as how many of those southern underground MC's prefer that sound. With the trap beats and all. While there are many, majority of them haven't been around quite as long as Memphis rapper Yo Gotti has. Debuting independently on the underground scene in 2000, it took four independent albums and a number of mixtapes for him to get to where he is now. One of the south's top trap rappers. Here he is with his sophomore album I Am. The follow up to his 2012 debut Live From The Kitchen. This is m first time hearing a whole project from Gotti. Album or mixtape. But based off radio songs, features and his style of music, I honestly didn't expect this album to be anything too great. To my expectations, it wasn't. The album was just average. However, it was still better than what I had originally anticipated. As I stated before, other than radio singles and features, this is my first time hearing music from Yo Gotti. I always looked at him as a typical southern trap rapper who can only talk about money, drugs and all other related hood shit. Now I still think he is that, even after listening to this. But there was a handful of songs on this album where he steps out of that trap/hood zone and delivers more meaningful and even uplifting topics. This certainly surprised me as I again, expected an album with nothing but trap beats and repetitive hooks. It seemed like the first half of this album was all the meaningful songs that I didn't expect and the second half of it were songs that I expected to hear. Don't know if this was intentional or not but it didn't help it much concept wise. Anyway, I don't have any favorite songs but here are some notable ones for me. "Respect That You Earn" is a very interesting song where Gotti basically talks about how women need to act a certain way and respect themselves if they want us men to respect them. Something I totally agree with. You get the respect that you earn as the title says. Getting Wale on this track was a good move seeing as how this is normally the type of song he would make. His guest verse was cool and so was Ne-Yo's hook. Cool song. I can't even front, a part of me actually likes the single "Act Right". It's not a song I would continuously play at home or in the car but when it's party time, I will definitely be jammin' to it. Now the second single "Cold Blood" is a lot more enjoyable. It's a soulful song with nice calm production that talks about the struggle, the pain, the horrors and the cold heart reality of the streets and life in general. I like the hook from Canei Finch, the sample that brought the soul into it and J. Cole's poetic guest verse. Not the type of song I would expect somebody like him to make a single considering all the trap beat assisted songs on here that sounds radio worthy. "Pride To The Side" was probably had the best production on the whole album. I first took notice of the Masterpiece "Love Is What You Make It" sample which was also used by Slim Thug on one of his old hits. A dope sample that made the song enjoyable. Now my not so notables. To me when a rapper names a track after athletes, in this case a basketball player, it automatically spells disaster. That was indeed the case with the track "LeBron James". Here's the hook: "I'm LeBron James you a fucking rookie/your broad want a ticket I'ma go and book it". Hilariously terrible. This is actually how I expected the entire album to sound. He was rapping about random b.s. not making sense and everything. Just  a terrible, terrible song. "F-U", despite it's funny and catchy hook, is another one that left me shaking my head. Repetitive hooks just irk my soul. The song has extremely short verses that don't talk about nothing but telling haters and such "fuck you". Then to make matters worse, Meek Mill gets on the track doing the most with his lame bars ("like a bitch when she twerkin/y'all niggas workin/clown ass niggas we should put you in the circus") and rapping over the hook as if we want to hear a longer verse of those lyrics. On "Die A Real Nigga" he gets his Future on with, you guessed it, auto-tune. I say time and time again there are some rappers who need to stay away from auto-tune because of how they sound normally. Yo Gotti is one of those rappers. I could go more in depth with this but the auto-tune just immediately made me hate it. "I Know" features an awful singing hook from Rich Homie Quan who also drops a rap verse just as bad. I wasn't feeling the half-assed beat either. "King Shit" has the potential to grow on me only because I liked T.I.'s verse on there. As of now though, this song doesn't sit well with me. Overall this album was only average. Which is thanks to a few songs with good topics otherwise this would have been one of the worst albums of the year. I give it a final grade of a C. It's obvious Yo Gotti loves the hood and the hood loves him back. He has tons of street smarts and understand what it takes to make it out of the struggle. I know at times I get frustrated with trap rappers because it's usually the same b.s. from them every time. But after finally listening to a full project from Yo Gotti, I now have a new level of respect for him. Even thought I didn't quite dig this album, I gotta admit, I'ma start checking for his future projects now. End.

Final Grade: C-

CREDITS

Executive Producers

Mario Mims

Benny Pough

Sha Money XL

Lead Artist

Mario Mims

Production

Marcello Valenzano

Andre Lyon

Marco Rodriguez-Diaz

Alexander Izquierdo

Jay King

Dequantes Lamar

Dale Warren

Anthony Norris

Carlton Mays, Jr.

David Versis

Jeremy McArthur

Jesse Wilson

Kenton Dunson

Paulo Rodriguez

Collaboration

Kendall Morgan

Dequantes Lamar

Robert Williams

Jermaine Cole

Dale Warren

Clifford Harris, Jr.

Shaffer Smith

Olubowale Akintimehin

Jay Jenkins

Keenon Jackson

Label

CMG/Epic Records