7/10
Favorite Track: "Aim For The Moon (feat. Quavo)" Least Favorite Track: "Creature (feat. Swae Lee)
Despite my wishes, youthful and pre-emptive death seems to be cementing itself as a faceted theme which plagues the artists of my generation and the music they create, that will be reflected upon for years to come. With every passing young hip hop artist that becomes a victim of their own vices, or the violent life that led them to succumb to such, a deeper scar is branded into the public’s perception of what modern hip hop is truly about. Not to say that the value of a life is altered based on one’s artistic merit, but the fact that nearly every rapper that we have lost in the past few years has had endless creative potential, makes the sting slightly more potent; the most recent example being the late Pop Smoke.
Like many of his deceased contemporaries, Pop Smoke’s estate made the executive decision to produce/finish what they could and release a posthumous album under their loved one’s name. The effort in question is of course the late rapper’s debut studio album: Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon. Now unlike some of the posthumous albums released by the Lil Peep and XXXTENTACION estates, Shoot For The Stars sounds like a finished project, chalk full of many of the same elements that made Pop Smoke such an interesting artist to begin with. Much like the way that Mac Miller’s estate entrusted Jon Brion to finish much of what Mac had started before he passed, Pop Smoke’s estate handed the reigns to the great 50 Cent on this one, and for the most part he does the project justice. However, there are times where Pop’s drill roots get buried under modern trap production troupes and I would more or less levy that blame against 50, as the executive producer.
Nonetheless, I’ll take a slight loss of vision over a sellout any way you slice it. This album seems to have genuine intentions close at heart. The features on here don’t seem too out of the ordinary from what Pop might have enlisted be if he were alive. Quavo shows up on here multiple times. His multiple appearances come off as a bit excessive but it isn’t too hard to believe, especially considering he was also featured on Pop’s Meet The Woo 2 tape before his passing. We also get guest appearances from friends of Pop like Lil Tjay, and fellow drill innovators like Rowdy Rebel of GS9 fame. At times the features on Shoot For The Stars seem to take a front seat , presumably because of the lack of content that this album’s team actually had that featured Pop Smoke, but not to a point where it becomes a distraction.
We open with a stretch of tracks that immediately sets the record on a forward trek toward success. Track #1, “Bad Bitch From Tokyo (Intro)”, feels like a prequel, and does little but provide a primer to use as a transition for the following title track, which I consider to be the true intro: “Aim For The Moon (feat. Quavo)”. Like many other cuts on this project Pop comes out of the gates swinging here, with an absolutely relentless flow and an incredibly cold-blooded delivery. Another highlight follows with “For The Night (feat. Lil Baby & DaBaby)”, where Pop Smoke trades his drill ambition for a pop-trap hook that sticks like glue. Further elevating the song is an out of character feature from Lil Baby that further proves how solid he can be in small doses. Other notable moments in the first leg of this album include the 90’s boom bap worship portrayed by the keys on “Gangsters”, and the drill return to form in “44 BullDog”.
Despite how influential Pop’s unique recall of Chicago’s drill scene was in it’s re-circulation to the Bronx, Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon proves that he had no intentions of being pigeon-holed into one sound for the remainder of his career. A surprising number of R&B cuts appear in the second half of this project. Subjectively, I feel as if he draws from a much more familiar place on these songs, but that doesn’t change the fact that most of them pan out just fine. “Something Special” boasts auto-tuned infatuation over a left-field Tamia sample while “What You Know Bout Love” interpolates Ginuwine’s “Differences”. Both trap love letters come off equally endearing.
Generally speaking, Pop Smoke doesn’t often miss a beat on Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon despite this album being superbly un-focussed, even for a posthumous release. He seems to jump from idea to idea, without much intention of choosing one and fleshing it out to its fullest degree. It makes the album a little hard to follow, but simultaneously keeps it’s nearly hour-long runtime from feeling bloated or drawn out. Besides a few hiccups like Swae Lee’s obnoxious feature on “Creature” or the slightly cringey hook on “Snitching (feat. Quavo & Future)”, I can’t help but note this project’s consistency.
Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon never really feels cohesive, in fact it often feels like more of a playlist than an album, but in this case maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. This half-playlist half-album features more bangers than the usual Friday dump of new releases on RapCaviar, and more songs to bump at a party than any fan could ask for. When Pop Smoke broke onto the scene with his massive hit “Welcome To The Party”, not even he could have predicted the ride that the next year would take him on, let alone how it would culminate into a tragic end. Nonetheless, I like to believe that he deserved to get to where he was. The inspiring nobility of encouraging people to shoot for the stars and to aim for the moon was only half of his personality, and in a style as versatile as his musicianship could have been, the other half was welcoming people to the party. Long live Woo.