Summertime ’06, Vince Staples – Review

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Vince Staples, of Long Beach, California, follows up his critically acclaimed 2014 EP with his debut album, Summertime ‘06. Staples now joins a small group of artists, including Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention and LCD Soundsystem, whose debut albums were double releases. Staples had a lot to live up to after Hell Can Wait, one of the best rap records of 2014, and he does not disappoint. Only recently he was chosen to drink from the mildly poisoned chalice that is XXL’s Freshman Class of 2015. Where Hell Can Wait was a showcase of talent, worked into a number of different guises and styles, Summertime ‘06 is much more focused. That Staples was able to maintain the razor sharp focus throughout the twenty songs of the double album speaks to his quality and to his growth as an artist. Other genres of music could learn a lot from the mixtape culture of rap music. Despite this being Staples’ debut album, he’s already got four mixtapes and an EP under his belt, allowing the rapper to pull off this ambitious project with a style and quality that defies the title of “debut”. Double albums have a reputation for being self-indulgent, and although the content of this album is very much about Staples’ life and youth, it is anything but.

Summertime ’06 documents Staples’ teenage years and his involvement with gangs and drug dealing and one person’s struggle to escape corrupting forces within a community under strain. This is rap as storytelling, with his sparse yet vivid lyrics giving us snapshots of his past. “Four deep, five seats, three guns”, Staples raps in Get Paid, conjuring up images in an economical and literary style.. He communicates images and feelings with a startling urgency. The first lines of the album give us an insight into the world of Staples’ youth; “Hey, I’m just a nigga, until I fill my pockets, then I’m Mr. Nigga”. One of the things that separates Summertime ‘06 from similar albums, is the hardboiled Californian Noir realism which the album is steeped in. While the album might be an unorthodox addition to the Cali Noir tradition, it is certainly a worthwhile addition to its canon.

The production fits the album like a glove: No I.D. (Dion Wilson), of Def Jam, oversaw the album, but it also includes guest production from Clams Casino and Christian Rich among others. The percussion is fitful and restless and the bassline which seethes throughout sounds like obstructed heavy breathing. Everything is surgically precise, there is no room for fat on this album. This is a look into someone’s past, but every drop of nostalgia has been wrung from it. The mechanical production is intertwined with the post-industrial wasteland setting of Los Angeles county, further tying the album into the Californian Noir tradition of the film Chinatown or most recently, the second season of True Detective. Summertime ‘06 will no doubt draw comparisons with Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid MAAD City, another album about a young man’s experience of gang culture, but it will not be made here, Summertime ‘06 is too good not to be talked about in its own right. Although Staples always raps about himself and his own situation, his dealings with near universal themes such as familial relations and the difficulties of growing up allow for listeners who have little context for what’s been rapped about to engage with the album in a meaningful way. This raises the album above the level of a good album into a great one: it has the ability to communicate and affect a listener regardless of how far removed they are from the social circumstances of the album.

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