Thursday, November 4, 2010

Currensy "Welcome Back"

Listening to Currensy as a younger emcee is interesting. He is a great example of someone who needed the mixtape game to perfect his craft. Sports Center Vol. 1 held my attention only in so far as an example of growth for one of my current favorites. Welcome Back does about the same. He sounds a little better, but this is a much shorter affair with only nine real songs.

In the course of one year Currensy switched camps and on Welcome Back hears him repping hard for the Young Money/Cash Money conglomerate. Their are no guests from the crew present but some of the beats sound as though they may be Mannie Fresh throw aways. Some hold the “Armz” stamp which leads me to believe he got them off the long running instrumental mixtape series done by J. Armz.

His content still revolves around money, go figure with the new alliance, and he is still attempting to carry the gangster image. On “Ambitions Az A Ridah Freestyle” he spits next to a chick I think named Diamond, his bars about killing someone hold nothing menacing behind them. Diamond comes on and has a vicious tone that next to Spitta tells me one thing: he doesn’t believe what he’s saying.

On “Change Clothes” he sounds terrific and it’s more of the same discussing moving grams and holding “so many guns in his trunk he ran out of room for his speakers.” He rides Jay-Z beats incredibly well and makes me wonder how long Dame has been watching him. He still isn’t discussing the sticky green all that much, and does rely on talking about how dope he is a bit too much.

Confidence is great though and it could be the exact reason that we know who Currensy is today and their are countless others who were rapping in 2004 who we don’t. At 23 Currensy was not the artist his partner Wiz Khalifa is, but his strong suits peak out from time to time on these early tapes and it awesome to see how he has identified and developed them.

Download here.

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