Steve 'Flash' JuonEverybody deserves a second chance and Skinnyfromthe9 is no exception. Even though “Skinny Wit the Zoo” was one of the worst things it was my displeasure to listen to for review in 2023, there’s just enough time left in the year to give him another shot on “Love Me Now.” At the worst it was only nine minutes longer than the last album (humorous to me given his name) and since it’s not a collaboration with another artist, it could better showcase what 9 has to offer. Essentially this was a “nothing to lose” proposition so I pressed play to find out if Skinny was fatter than I thought.
There was something strange going on though. Many of 9’s songs quickly run out of steam and continue in his absence. Take “Groupie” for example — he’s done rapping/singing 82 seconds in but the track is nearly twice that long. The unnamed producer (there are no liner notes but one source suggests DillyGotItBumpin and River Beats as candidates) makes a good enough beat to listen to for a minute without Skinny’s vocals, but it comes across as unnecessarily padding the song’s length. When your entire album is under a half hour to begin with that’s a significant problem. You shouldn’t need to pad out the length of something that short.
The album’s longest song “Important” features a full minute and a half of solo music, with a producer drop in the intro that I can only guess says “it’s a Menace beat boy.” Based on the short description found under the clip on YouTube, that tracks, so I’d like to congratulate Menace on releasing a fire beat tape. His instrumental is more “Important” than 9 lyrics like “Diamonds on my neck they looking frozen/Fell asleep with all my ice, my neck the coldest/I’m fucking bitches it don’t matter if it’s yo’ bitch.” Yawn. I’m sure he gets the most trim, spends the most cash, smokes the most weed and drinks the most lean too, just like every rapper like 9 who says the same shit.
“Let me talk my shit… got an iced out wrist…”
Another thing that makes 9 similar to so many other artists in the Soundcloud rap genre is getting infamous for other offenses. If AI learns how to generate rap stars these dudes are in trouble. It all starts to feel shockingly like CB4, a movie that mocked the idea of pretending to be felons to become a rap star, only today’s rappers decided not to pretend. Why not? If you can fake the jewels and rent the whips, a bogus rap sheet is better than a real one. Even the cover art of “Love Me Now” is computer generated, so there’s no reason not to let machine learning do the time for the crime instead of 9 potentially doing a nine by nine himself. “You haven’t been through what I’ve been through, how the fuck you gonna judge me?” quips 9 on “Far.” Nobody’s judging sir. I just think taking shortcuts could lead you in the wrong direction.
The good news is that “Love Me Now” isn’t worse than the last Skinny album I covered. The bad news is that he’s still not someone I can enthusiastically recommend. He’s either got nothing to say or says nothing at all while the tracks ride on, and I’m not sure which way I prefer it, which is a huge problem when you’re the star of the project. I’d honestly be fine with listening to producers like Menace just do their thing solo though. There’s some fire here but it burns out in 26 minutes. That’s for the best until Skinnyfromthe9 has more fuel to feed it.