7.5/10
Favorite Track: "Bad Idea (Feat. Chance The Rapper)"
Least Favorite Track: "Family Matters (Arin Ray)"
YBN Cordae’s debut studio album The Lost Boy, is him at his most real. The raw, gritty, and skillful lyricism throughout the whole project makes it clear that he never planned to leave any of his thoughts off this collection of tracks. Lines like the ones off of the intro track ; “Wintertime”, where Cordae speaks on his now past addiction to xanax to help his anxiety and how he was afraid to speak up because “society clowns anyone with a problem”, give us a crystal clear view into his headspace. For the most part I enjoy The Lost Boy. I was the slightest bit disappointed because of how incredibly high my aspirations were for this project after hearing the three singles, but nonetheless I do enjoy it. Unfortunately, the three singles remained my favorite three tracks off the record despite me hoping Cordae would top them multiple times. My main issue with the record is how topheavy it is. The runtime really does perform like a downhill sprint, as the deeper you get into the tracklist the less interesting the songs get. That isn’t to say that it ever really gets to a point where we get an extremely bad song, but the first half of the album is much stronger than the second. Songs like “RNP” and “Bad Idea” carry the first half while deep cuts like the corny “Family Matters” don’t exactly live up to the precedent that the latter half set. As the album progresses the track listing goes from Amazing to an eventual decent. However, the most consistent part of The Lost Boy lies in the instrumentals. The outros shine specifically on most of these tracks, as there are a number of songs on this thing that fade into very interesting, tasteful, and unexpected string sections or piano lines. In addition to this, Cordae’s singing on the album was a very pleasant surprise as he definitely has proven that he can sing with passion and sing well. Most of the singing on the hooks on the album is very solid when delivered by Cordae. The most exciting aspect of this project might be the potential it shows, as there are some songs on here that are definitely huge standouts and overall they are tracks that make me very excited to see what this kid does next.