Steve 'Flash' Juon“Damn it, y’all sounding the same to me”
You know what they say about throwing stones in glass houses right? If not I present to you “Tales From the King of Enigma” by Sybyr a/k/a Mac Sybyr. Within the first three songs of his album I caught this rapper sounding like three other emcees I already knew. “Catch 22” had him sounding like Takeoff (RIP) with his cadence. “Keep That” sounds like he tried to go deeper and raspier than Keak Da Sneak but had to come up for air. “Let the Hammer Drop” is where he dropped both ideas and decided to go full blown Death Grips. You tell me if I’m wrong. He puts so much distortion on it even I’m not sure.
I kept waiting for him to make good on his mantra of not being another rapper that sounds like everybody else, then I heard his AutoTune singing on “Buy Me Out of Texas” flowing to the same “Aquatic Ambiance” music from Donkey Kong Country everybody else loops. Yeah that shit’s the bomb but a million indie rappers put it on their mixtapes. I think Lil B has probably done it five times over given how prolific his music is. You can’t complain about everybody sounding the same when all you do is all the tropes of every other underground unsigned emcee ever.
I tried very hard to give Sybyr a chance on “Tales From the King of Enigma,” but when he’s so clearly imitating the styles of every rapper he admires, it’s really hard to do so. Why would you listen to a low rent Trippie Redd or Travis Scott doing “Rat Tattoo” when you could listen to the real thing? At least the idea of him getting a rodent tat is original. That much is true. Not sure why you’d want a flea bitten, food stealing pest when you could have a tiger, a dragon or a pit bull, but it’s definitely unique.
There’s just nothing here that makes Sybyr stand out. I hate to end the year on a downer note, but that’s just the nature of the beast. They can’t all be winners and with less than 100 views on any song here when I wrote this review, I think Sybyr is well aware of that too. That’s probably why he added “Mac” to his name and started his career over. I hope the second version works out better for him.