Pop Smoke had so much in his favor. His mystifying voice had the ability to sound like a roaring fire and he was becoming the face of the New York drill scene. Drill, a subgenre of rap music made famous in Chicago and as far-reaching as the United Kingdom and Australia, has a dark, violent and hectic in-your-face style. Smoke had a unique sound falling somewhere in between Ja Rule and DMX. Sadly, he was fatally shot earlier this year – another future star taken too soon.
On his posthumous debut album, “Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon,” Smoke’s sound has evolved from a dingy underground subgenre to a cohesive commercial album. As opposed to his past mixtapes which feature his rapid-paced aggressive drill sound, this album has a mixture of slow ballads and what fans would usually expect from Pop Smoke. The worst part about “Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon” is that fans will never get to see what Smoke’s reaction would have been to his first full-length album.
The positives of this album start with the tracklist; the 18 songs help manage the fact that this is his only album. The features on the album include DaBaby, Lil Baby, Swea Lee, Future, 50 Cent and many others, attesting to the amount of star power Smoke already had, although Quavo is featured a bit too much. While some of the features do help add a new flare to his sound, the main highlights of this album are Smoke’s solo songs.
“44 BullDog,” the fourth track on the album, perfectly sums up Smoke’s classic style. It’s a frenzy of dark and dingy sounds. His voice sounds less like a vehicle for his lyrics than another instrument itself as he inserts low-fi adlibs after every line, giving it an extra level of aggression. Not that the song needs more of that – “44 BullDog” references Smoke’s weapon of choice.
Another interesting aspect of this album is Smoke’s ability to change up his flow. On his well-known songs such as “Foreigner” and “Dior,” he raps in the prototypical trap method following a triplet system which can, at times, make him sound somewhat rushed. On the track “Gangsta,” Smoke abandons this style for a more slowed down sound which somehow denotes even more aggressiveness. He touts his street cred while also taking shots at another modern New York rapper, Tekashi 6ix9ine.
The issue this album does have is the number of features. While the addition of an artist can create an interesting dynamic, the album feels overwhelmed with features. Some of the artists featured at times take the spotlight from Pop Smoke such as Roddy Rich on “The Woo,” or the bizarre Pop Smoke imitation from Future on “Snitching.”
The feature that shines the brightest is “Enjoy Yourself (feat. KAROL G),” a track that is much slower than a typical Pop Smoke song. The mix is much less frantic than many of the other beats on this album. What also surprises is the addition of the Colombian regetón singer, KAROL G. Her verse and bridge in the song are both sung in Spanish. While this mix wouldn’t normally be expected, it’s intriguing that Smoke sought out another language for his song.
Pop Smoke’s first album reinforces what a loss he was to the rap community. It showed that he was ready to take the next step into fame. He was ready to go from the face of an underground rap scene to the face of the modern rap game.
