If anyone’s capable of making a classic rap album, it’s Max B. That’s a conjecture that has little to do with his raps. It’s his unmatched ability to compose melodic hooks that puts him in a class of his own. Most rap songs suffer at the breaks, which is arguably the most important part of a song, but not his. He sings them with the same playful laid-back delivery and that makes him a one-trick pony, but it’s an impressive trick. Add the fact that his raps are consistently on-point, putting him at least on-level with Biggie, Jay-Z and 2Pac; the three rappers that inspired his ridiculous Biggaveli moniker; and Max B becomes a force to be reckoned with in the world of popular music.
What prevents this, his first official album, from being the masterpiece it could’ve been comes down to the song selection and the order in which those songs are presented. Max B is in prison, he’s been in prison since 2009 and he’s sentenced to be there for about 73 more years, so some of these songs have been circulating on the internet for years. But many of the ones not included here, like the classic Bang Bang Boogie, should’ve been. Tattoos On Her Ass, which confuses groupie appreciation with rap beef, is a rush of messy excellence. Porno Musik is hot. Money feels like a million bucks. Boss Don Season, in which he sings in the melody of the beat, is comparatively lackluster.
My biggest problem with the album, it’s most glaring blunder, is that its first verse isn’t even by Max B. The album, which begins with a song entitled Model Of Entropy, is basically introduced by a rapper named Young Riot, which flaws the concept right from the start. It’s a decision that probably shouldn’t bother me as much as it does; I can be OCDish when it comes to such things; but it does. Vigilante Season, even with its flaws; I didn’t even mention the mixtape-level mixing and mastering; is as “wavy” as a hurricane though. It’s about as good as I expected from an album that, unless Max B manages to go free from prison on appeal, which seems unlikely, may as well be posthumous.
my rating : 4 of 5
2011
The rapper Young Riot was a then-recent artist of Amalgam, so they basically spliced his verses in after Max B was already in prison. Amalgam even released a whole mixtape “A Wave Called Yes” (2010) like it was a collaboration between the two but that was also mostly just a couple unused verses from Max B and phone calls from prison, most of the tape was just Young Riot. They were trying to push him hard, but he just wasn’t ‘wavy’ and flopped!