The rollout for G-Eazy’s fifth album The Beautiful & Damned has been nothing less than devilishly designed. The first single “No Limit” was the club-oriented banger that champions current turn-up specialists A$AP Rocky and Cardi B while the second single, “Him & I” featuring his real-life girlfriend Halsey is a clear play to his vast female fan base. His calculated effort at feeding the proverbial “streets” with a raw rap record and then swooping in with a Spotify playlist-friendly love song is a modern textbook one-two punch when it comes to album promotion. Such a two-pronged power move lets listeners easily slip into the G-Eazy’s most inwardly focused album to date.
Spending a lot of time battling his personal devils and angels, the entire album — start to finish — has G getting his Robert Langdon through a mental tug-of-war between the angelic rap star living lavishly and the devilish rap star on the destructive path. There’s a taste of this dichotomy early on the album’s intro and title track “The Beautiful & Damned” where G contemplates: “I’m talking to myself like every night/You could try to be a better guy/But to understand a Gemini/Angel, Devil, it’s both him and I.”
More theological musings are sprinkled throughout, especially on songs like “Pray for Me” where a female counterpart “looks like an angel, she might be a demon” and “Leviathan” where he tells that same female figure “When I told her I’m the devil, I was smiling.” The production team also gels to the point where finding a subpar beat is next to impossible. Murda Beatz, OZ, Cardiak and Boi-1da, among others, canvas pitch-perfect melodies that echo the best 2017 rap music formulas. Spacey baselines, quick claps, and thundering 808s. But just when the beats feel a little too similar, a record like “Summer In December” finds Henry Daher serving a scratchy boom-bap slapper that envisions a rainy day on the boulevard of broken rap dreams.
Yet the consciousness to appease all fans is where The Beautiful & Damned suffers. Enlisting the likes of Anna of the North, Zoe Nash and Charlie Puth amongst others will definitely attract a multitude of listeners. But having them deliver their eight-bar chorus, three times per song only to fade in the back with no further contribution is painfully glaring. It’s a knock on G’s usual song structuring process and ultimately it waters down the value of a compelling R&B chorus.
Established formulas of pandering singles and assembly line choruses aside, The Beautiful & Damned possesses enough serious assertiveness and classic Bay area slick talk to get burn well into 2018. He self-confidently declares he’s “back drinking whiskey” with no hesitation on bravado bouncer “Legend” and frivolously focuses on girls doing cocaine on the swaggy “Gotdamn;” encapsulating his Gemini badge perfectly.
Welcome to Eazy Season.
Dope really surprised by this album
G-Eazy is dope
Wack
good stuff
beast
Where is the Uncle Murda Review!!!!!
absolute mainstream garb.
i rather listen to the real eazy e this trash boi
And you motherfuckers have the guts to call Em’s album garbage?!
Calm down Stanley, I know you’re going through a hard time right now
With a great flow and some great lyrics on the album, G-Eazy comes back with a banger!
This album is really good, a perfect mix, and perfect vibes.
It was better than I expected it to be. There’s a few gems, nothing else.
Fucking Fire!
Good album.
Good features , nice lyrics, good flow and beat co-insist together. rarely any gems but ill i give this a 4/5
It’s a double album witch means it’s meant to be played in 2 parts. Split from part A 1-10 and and part B 11-20. Part A is a partially watered down party album. Something you might here at a college party. A couple “bangers” but nothing really that catches my attention. Part B on the other hand is a lot of acoustic beats that include the piano for a soothing sound, paired with verses that hold true soul and heart. Talking about everything from love and heartbreak to addiction and internal conflicts that Gerald struggles with every day. Overall I consider Part B to be the Junior album where fans would criticize they’re beloved G to be a “sellout” on the other hand inconsider part B to be the best album from the 28 year old rapper from the Bay that includes range, originality, and soul.
G-eazy is a sleeper
A pretty solid album. G Eazy is much more lyrical here. I love the «Pick Me Up» song, i think Thats my favourite, But the rest were pretty god damn solid too. His best album by far
He does his thing on this album. Impresseive work. Generally enjoyable with some standouts.
His voice is terrible though. High pitched and nerdy. G-Eazy is the white J. Cole. Album production subpar. Rhymes are weak. Elementary school flow.
Dont ever disrespect Cole by comparing him to someone like G Eazy…
Great album ! Consistent, great beats, great content.
5/5
Great album !
Very solid 2 part album. G-EAZY has delivered some of his best work on this album
G-easy is horrible. This is commercialization at its worst. Corny white pop rappers are a disease to hip-hop music. The music is so terrible during the rap years 2000-2018 you have no talented white rappers getting popular. Where are the talented white hip hop artists who don’t sell out the music. You guys have been suckered into liking weak, gay and no talented rappers similar to lil wayne, drake, gucci bag, lil pump and yes M. Back in the day, we wouldn’t allow today’s rapper to get on stage and perform. I hate to say this but somebody would have beat the hell out of today’s rapper. SAD BUT TRUE! You guys keep dressing like girls and gays and have fun. DEATH TO THE RAP YEARS AND CORPORATIONS!
You can almost taste the ignorance in a comment like this. You’re literally like a walking satire. Congratulations.
The most developed and talented white artist in the game is Rittz. He has 4 or 5 classic bodys of work. He outshined TechN9ne so bad he was outselling him on his own label. He easily crafts more catchy shit than anyone not tryin. Raps better than everyone.. Eminem signed Yela but not Rittz. Why? Cus Rittz would outshine the “master” Yela tried sonning him after Tech sonned him for 4 years. He really thought off the strength rittz would get super popping making nothing off 100k+ records sold indy then sign his rights away to yela after the shitdeal.
A solid album! Love every single song of this album.. most of the songs are lyrically rich songs.. one of the best rap albums of 2017??.. ????
!
Going into “The Beautiful and Damned” I was incredibly skeptical, and to say that I was expecting something terrible is… well, true. Still, I had some hope as I do know the talent that G-Eazy possesses and has shown streaks of in his past (see The Endless Summer). So, where does it stand now that I’ve listened to it in its entirety? In short, this album was overall solid, but nothing truly groundbreaking. To give it a 1 star rating and say it’s trash, poorly constructed, corny, or anything along those lines is baffling to me as it most certainly is not anywhere close to awful. That being said, just as confusing are the perfect 5 star ratings and comments that herald it as one of the best albums of the year, which also most certainly is not true.
The album, although not necessarily consistent in tone, is very consistent in quality. The majority of the album at the very least provides an enjoyable listening experience (for me personally aside from “Him & I”, “No Limit”, and “Gotdamn”) and at times can be of shockingly high quality.
One of the major complaints I’ve seen directed toward the album is the contrasting tone between songs from the lavish lifestyle of the young and reckless to the crushing lows of regret experienced afterwords. The way that I see it, this was a deliberate act done to express the duality of the celebrity-status lifestyle, how jarring the highs and lows can be, and just how fast what once was a dream can become monotonous, or even nightmarish.
This album provides something for just about every type of music listener and the diversity among tracks is one of my favorite aspects of the album. Now, that being said, just because it’s something that I personally prefer does not mean that it’s necessarily a standard of quality, as in doing this, G-Eazy almost completely eliminates the possibility of every song being a hit to any given person. One could even go so far as to say that because of how diverse the track listing is, most listeners could say the album as a whole was mediocre (or among the more reasonable fans as “not their type”) but that it had two or three tracks that they absolutely loved. That being said, you can’t deny the lyricism and wordplay chops of G-Eazy as highlighted by a multitude of songs on the album, even if you don’t personally like the sound of every single song.
This album can be rather divisive among listeners and it really depends on what types of hip hop you tolerate. The styles of rap presented here are for the most part more than tolerable for me, so I found the majority of the tracks here to be good, if not great. I was hooked by the earworm-y choruses of songs like “Sober” and “Leviathan” , I loved listening to the wordplay, storytelling, and lyricism put on display in songs like “Summer in December” and “Eazy”, and enjoyed almost living vicariously through the duality in a rapper’s turbulent life in songs like “Beautiful and Damned” and “Pray for Me”.
Overall, this album was a joy to listen to and an excellent rebound from what in my opinion was a mediocre album (When It’s Dark Out) that is worth a listen if you’re able to ignore the obnoxious, feverish fanbase and the hate attributed to G’s name (largely because of said fanbase), and just appreciate music for music. Listen to this album with an open mind and I guarantee you it will be a pleasant surprise!
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this WAS A ROTTEN NO GOOD DELUSIONAL PARNOID BRAINWASHED RACEIST BIGOT HYPACRIT DARKY NIGGRO THUG BUM AND NOT WORTH THE POWDER TO BLOW HIS BRAINS OUT. eazy SHOULD HAVE HAD HIS BACK WHIPPED AND BEEN DEPORTED FOREVER FROM THE UNITED STATES.
eazy was SPIRITUALY POOR AND BANKRUPT. he is burning in hell for not acceting JESUS and surrendering to JESUS. eazy is begging JESUS FOR ONE DROP OF WATER AND IN CONTIUAL TORMENT IN HELL TODAY AND WILL NEVER HAVE THE CHANCE TO REPENT AND SURRENDER HIS LIFE AND WILL TO JESUS AND WILL BURN FOREVER IN CONTIUAL TORMENT IN HELL AS HE IS RIGHT NOW.