Photo by Malte Wingen on Unsplash
By John Morris, Staff Writer
Spillage Village is made up of things I like individually and I tend to like them as a whole. Their past works have made me a bit wary. The group is typically hit or miss. JID always manages to come in strong, but aside from that, there’s usually a bit of question as to whether EARTHGANG and the others will come in as strong as they do on their solo tracks. This is a very good look for the group. Most of the songs are very good. There is a bit of a top-heaviness in the album, but even the second half is still pretty good! Granted, my bias for JID shines through, but he really is the best member of Spillage Village by far, and his talent shines on this album.
The album starts with a fun little skit that asks some big questions before sending the listener right into “Baptize,” which is very obviously one of the best songs on the album. Every verse delivers, which I find is commonly the case for EARTHGANG and JID songs but is rare to find in Spillage Village tracks when they’re all together. “Baptize” just works. Every rapper comes in with their notable deliveries, the production is as good as any of this group’s production usually is. I could do without the outro, but the outro is also worth it for the first few listens (it adds a bit too much length to the song for how often I play it on repeat). This song also begins showing off one of the central themes of the album: Why would God let 2020 happen?
“PsalmSing” has Mereba singing a fun love tune with some background vocals from the usual rappers. It’s nice and relaxing, and is needed to cool down the momentum after “Baptize.” It isn’t going to blow anyone’s mind, but I’ve played this track more than I have some of the more reflective songs.
“Ea’alah” is happy. In fact, I thought there were actually some Watsky influences because it captured the joyful feelings I get from his tunes. There were also some influences in JID’s style that made me almost certain that the artist had to have been at least partially inspired by goofy Watsky songs because of how close it sounds. Regardless, it’s the best song on the album. The verses deliver, they play around with some production tricks and it works out, and everyone on the track shows up again. Add it to your playlists.
“Mecca” continues the trend of really great songs where the band is playing around with sounds and it still ends up being a jam. Doctur Dot wasn’t weak by any means, but was clearly outshined by Johnny Venus and JID. Like most of the album, the production here is very good which helps make every song sound so much better. Every instrumental has personalities and quirks that guarantees no two tracks mesh together.
I was surprised to see Chance the Rapper feature on a song in 2020, but there he is in “Judas.” There are very interesting samples of Ray Charles that helped the chorus to stand out. Chance also shows up, which I thought was impressive given that he wasn’t drowned out by just how good JID is here. This song is still good, but it is still probably the weakest of the songs up until this point of the album. Hold a bit of how good the song is tightly.
“Oshun” marks the first song that isn’t super noticeable, and it isn’t even bad. The first verse and the chorus make the beginning hard to push through, but if one is willing to get to Dot’s verse, it’s worth it. It is also worth skipping the rest after Dot’s verse. This track makes me feel like there was a lot of wasted potential. Dot showed off some of what could have been done on it, but I should be happy that at least there’s that section that redeems it. It isn’t to say that the rest of the album is bad by any means, but the quality that was there in the first half just isn’t present in the second.
If JID isn’t in a song on this album, the song could benefit from a JID feature. This is both because JID makes every track he’s in better, but also because there is a certain quality that the other parties have when they have to compete with him. 6LACK and Johnny Venus are both very talented, but “Cupid” ended up as an aggressively decent song. I’m not going to put it on, I might not turn it off if it were to come on. It still feels disappointing to think of how much better this could have been with JID on it.
“Shiva” ends up pretty good! Not my favorite track by any means, but everyone approaches it with a certain quality of content. Venus comes off of delivering a mediocre verse to showing up in full extent. The only problem with JID’s verse is that it’s so late in the song and it’s shorter than I want it to be in a song that’s over four minutes. It’s worth a listen. If you have some way to isolate and listen to the JID verse on repeat, I recommend it.
“End of Daze” is good. The JID verse is, as to be expected, the best part of it. Again, him being on the track brings everyone else’s quality up. Mereba even showed up while actually rapping, which I didn’t expect since her normal style is typically more soul than traditional rap. While JID’s verse can’t be beat, Hollywood JB manages to end it with the second best verse. The outro is good when you’re in the mood for it, but it falls into the problem of being fantastic for the first few listens and then growing tedious. It should say something about the quality of the song that I’ve already listened to it enough times to grow tired of the end.
On my first listen of “Hapi,” I really didn’t like it. Now that I hear Mereba’s flow, I’m starting to respect her more as an artist. She doesn’t have a JID flow, but when compared to the rest of Spillage Village, she is very good. The beginning of her section of the song shows that. Venus’s section is so interesting because he took it in a completely unexpected direction. It’s still very good (though I think if he’d have done it as he would have any other song, it probably would have been better). I will say, at almost seven minutes and a lot of singing happening after the chorus, it feels like it could have been shortened down to probably five or five-and-a-half minutes and kept all of the verses. Benji’s end into Big Rube’s thought provoking outro is a pretty great way to end a song. Again, the track would be better if JID was on it, but it’s not bad.
I think I gave the latter half of the album a worse first-review than I should have. Upon the second listen, the second portion went much better. “Jupiter” went from being one of my least favorite tracks to a happy way to end the fantastic collection. It’s the only song that isn’t super long, and it’s mostly just cheerful singing. It’s nice and happy and keeps things uplifting to close.
Overall, the album is good. I think it’s worth listening to twice, because many of these songs I thought I hated in my preliminary listen, but I found that on second chance, I enjoyed them. Give it an honest try, and if you don’t have the time for a full listen, make sure to give the JID verses an honest shot because they always deserve it. I know I say many albums in 2020 are managing to fit in even in a field of competitors, but JID’s verses alone make it stand out, and when he’s working on a song, the stakes seem a bit higher than usual. Give it a listen, you won’t be disappointed.
