This album was released on June 21st this year. Honestly, I wasn’t that excited for this project before I listened to it. I enjoyed the album that he dropped just a few months prior, Collusion with Vanderslice, but it was far from the quality of his previous work. Since he was releasing this so soon, I honestly assumed that it’d be a rushed, less polished follow up. Thankfully, my fears were extinguished when I actually listened to this album. This shit is way better than Collusion. Collusion was a good album, but it’s not the kinda record that I’d get excited about. It’s one of those projects that would probably only really be super enjoyable to hardcore fans. I liked it, but it was very flat. Definitely not a good entry point for new listeners. I’m just gonna talk about this whole album in the order of the tracklist because there’s really only one song that I didn’t personally care for.

The project starts off with Marvel, which was the lead single for the album if I’m not mistaken.

I think it’s kind of a strange choice for an intro, but I still think it’s a fantastic track. Almost every single line of the song contains a mention of a Marvel character. Maybe it’s not the most original theme, but the flawless execution is super impressive.

Y’all get torn to shreds
Ghostrider in the cypher; shit is fire off the head
Plus it’s often said I’m Stan Lee with a pad
Hank McCoy dropping science, I’m a beast in the lab
All I need is a bag of weed and I spaz
Burning Mary-Jane like Spider-man’s penis with crabs
A genius who has fans Jersey Shore to Iraq
I flipped words before Nick Fury wore an eyepatch

I think the song is awesome lyrically. My only gripe with it is the production. The beat isn’t really bad, but it just doesn’t stand out very much. It’s average as hell. It’s fine though. It works. The main selling point of the song is obviously Diabolic’s rapping anyway. The second track, The Story, was also the second single from the album.

I feel like this would’ve made more sense as the intro for the album, but it doesn’t matter I guess. I think the song is dope, but the production was pretty underwhelming to me. In fact, the production really isn’t very good on this whole album in general. Diabolic’s actual rapping is what makes it worth returning to. The Story is pretty much just him reminiscing about his younger days when he was first getting into rapping. I enjoyed the song, but it would’ve been much better if the production wasn’t so stale. It’s even worse on the following track, Pyrex. I think the song is kinda good, but the beat fucking sucks. It’s produced by BP, who unfortunately did half of the songs on the album. I guess it’s just a testament to how good of a rapper Diabolic is that he managed to make the song good despite it having such a shitty instrumental. I gotta give a shoutout to DJ G.I. Joe too because he did a good job with the scratches during the hook. It’s a low point on the album for me, but I still like it to some extent. Thankfully, the following song, Collide, is actually a standout track for me. Once again, the production from BP is pretty dull, but it’s a step up from the preceding beat. I think one thing that stands out about this album is the fact that Diabolic actually got pretty personal with the content. Collide is all about the fucked up relationship between him and his baby’s mama. It’s a fantastic track. Diabolic is actually much more likable on this album than he was on Collusion. He came off as a total prick on that project, but here he’s a bit more personable. Anyway, I know I’ve been kinda shitting on BP throughout this review so far, but there’s actually one beat on this project from him that I thought was pretty good. The dark instrumental on Holy War was actually pretty dope to me. It’s just as repetitive as all the other beats from BP, but the actual loop itself is far more entertaining to me. The concept of the song is pretty interesting too. The first verse is a conversation between him and God, with him playing both roles. Basically, Diabolic is like “I’m sorry bro. Please let me live,” and God is all like “Nah, B. You fucked up. You’re a piece of shit. Go fuck yourself,” and then Diabolic is like “Damn, son.” After that I guess Diabolic gets sent to hell, and then the second verse is him conversing with Satan. The hook is a sample of The Gravediggaz’s Diary of a Madman, scratched up by DJ Eclipse. The second verse was actually kinda corny to me, but I thought it was solid overall. I just couldn’t take the voice of Satan saying “H-E-double hockey sticks” seriously. Really wish he hadn’t said that. Satan is the last person who would ever refer to Hell as H-E-double hockey sticks. It’s fine though I guess. The song is still dope overall. The following track, Lost in Translation, was another standout for me. I actually thought the production from Charlie G. was relatively good, and Diabolic killed it. I love the way the percussion doesn’t come in until the second half of the song. The song is dope af. It’s followed by my least favorite track on the album though. The thing is, I feel like Fable could’ve been a decent track. It’s really just the hook that ruins it for me. I’m not a fan of this Maggie Burnz woman’s singing at all. I think she sounds terrible. The rest of the song is fine though. The beat isn’t great, but it’s decent. The content isn’t particularly appealing to me, but I think Diabolic did a good job with it. That hook really ruins the track for me though. I’m never gonna listen to it again. The next song, What I Want, is a pretty good track. I feel like this could’ve been left off the album though. I enjoyed it, but it feels inessential. It could’ve been a promotional single or a bonus track. I wouldn’t argue with someone calling it filler. I do like it though. He threw yet another jab at Talib Kweli. It’s interesting that he keeps dissing Talib because I’m pretty sure Talib doesn’t even know about it. Anyway, the final single was a song called Lumberjack, which ended up being another really good track.

I think Diabolic’s rapping on this track is really great, and I even thought the beat was kinda cool at first too. However, the instrumental is bizarrely repetitive, so it just gets old really fast. It’s a shame because it probably would’ve ended up being one of my favorite songs on the album if it had better production. That line where he referenced Tyler the Creator was interesting. I couldn’t tell if it was a subtle diss or not. He basically asked if he has to wear tight jeans and eat a roach in order to blow up. At first I thought he meant roach, as in the butt of a joint, but the “tight jeans” part made it clear that he was referencing the Yonkers video. Anyway, Dirty actually has another feature from Maggie Burnz. Once again, I thought she sounded really bad, but she fortunately didn’t completely ruin the song for me. Her contribution was very small, so she didn’t really have time to fuck the song up. It also features another rapper named Tones, who I’d never heard of before listening to this shit. I thought he was decent though. Diabolic definitely blew him out of the water, but he did an okay job. Interestingly enough, he actually kinda reminded me of Jus Allah at one point, which is kinda funny since Diabolic released a diss track towards Jus fairly recently. I’m not really sure what the cause of that whole beef is, but I can’t really say that I care. Obviously I’m a huge JMT fan, but that’s mainly because of Vinnie Paz. I think Jus Allah is cool, but he’s kind of unnecessary. It just seems like he tries to do what Vinnie Paz does, but he doesn’t pull it off quite as well. That’s what listening to Dirty was like. Diabolic was great. Tones was cool, but nowhere near as impressive. I kinda like the song I guess. I don’t think I’ll delete it from my library, but it’s far from a favorite of mine. Actually… You know what? Fuck it. I don’t like the song. I mean, it’s decent. I don’t see myself coming back to it though. The actual rapping was cool, but I didn’t care for the vocals from Maggie Burnz, and the beat kinda sucked too to be honest. It’s not the worst song on the album. It’s probably the second worst though. I’m never gonna listen to it again, but I think it’s an okay track. I don’t really have much to say about the other tracks. I like all of them though. I thought the beat from BP on Enough was actually solid, and of course Diabolic’s rapping was great. Roundhouse was interesting because it was pretty much just a diss track. Well… It’s not I guess. It starts off with a shot at Talib Kweli, but then it just turns into a typical Diabolic track. It’s dope though. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was cool to hear a feature from Taboo again too. He killed it. The penultimate track, Wrote This, was another standout for me. It’s another one of the more introspective, personal songs on the project. The production from S.A.L was actually kinda decent too. Compared to the rest of the beats on this album, it’s good. My favorite track actually ended up being the final song though. I think that song is amazing. I don’t know why the fuck Engineer didn’t do more beats on this project. He did almost every track on Diabolic’s first album, but he only had one beat on this one, which is pretty disappointing. He easily made the best beat on the whole album. I love the way the song is structured too. It’s just a great instrumental with Diabolic spitting his ass off the entire time. There’s no hook or bridge or anything like that. It’s just rapping. I love it. It’s a great finale. So yeah. That’s the album. 🙂

This album is great. Again, I wasn’t really excited for this record after hearing Collusion, but this one feels much more polished. I mean, the production is ass on a lot of these songs, but Diabolic’s rapping is so good that I didn’t mind it that much. In the future, I’d prefer if he did more work with Engineer because I think they make good music together. I guess it doesn’t matter exactly who the producer is as long as the beats are better than this. He still managed to make a great album with trash beats though, so that’s impressive. I still think his first two albums are superior, but this is an improvement over Collusion. It was cool for him to actually get more personal with the content as well. I’m glad I gave this album a chance. It’s dope. Check it out.

Favorite Song: Buddy Lembeck
Least Favorite Song: Fable

80