YG – STAY DANGEROUS Album Review

Compton’s very own YG released his third studio album STAY DANGEROUS on August 3rd. The album dropped the same day as rappers Travis $cott and Mac Miller, making it a very busy week for fans. He sold 56k units first week, arriving at number five on the Billboard 200 list. With the overwhelming promo for the album and hit single Big Bank to accompany it, this project felt like mess.

STAY DANGEROUS feels like YG’s musical midlife crisis.

The first five tracks on the album are proof of this. His delivery on a few of these tracks sound like he’s trying something new, but it doesn’t work for him. On the intro track, he’s rapping awkwardly melodic on both verses and it sounds awful. The bars and production aren’t the problem, it’s that delivery ruining the song. The next song, BULLETPROOF, is full of lazy bars over good production. YG literally raps:

“Ooh, they like damn that nigga nasty

Yeah, fuckin’ on a bitch that’s classy

Yeah, the dick was good, she harassed me

Yeah, then I nutted on them ass cheeks”

If this isn’t a key example of a filler track, then I don’t know what is. Track 3 is HANDGUN featuring A$AP Rocky, and it is downright awful. YG sings the chorus with an annoying quivering voice and manages to rap “Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, goose” for two bars and they kept it on the song. This is followed by SUU WHOOP, a mediocre track reminding us that he is a full fledged Blood. Then there’s CAN’T GET IN KANADA, where YG does this quivering voice while rapping again, making it uncomfortable. The hook sounds generic as well.

The reason that I am going through each of these five tracks is because somehow, though the album starts like this, everything after Track 5 is quality music.

YG has a lot of potential radio records on the second half of this album. BIG BANK, though heavily reliant on features, is YG’s big radio record that he manages to have every time that he drops an album. TOO COCKY is a possible hit, especially since it’s a flip of Right Said Fred’s classic record Too Sexy. He then has two tracks about women, which is uncommon in YG’s discography; those songs being Ty Dolla $ign assisted POWER, and SLAY featuring Quavo.

The rapping gets much better towards the end of the project when YG gets back into his west coast style. On the track PUSSY MONEY FAME, he gradually tells us what he would do for  each of these three things, but he transitions between them seamlessly. Then there’s DEEPER THAN RAP, a great track where YG gets very introspective about his life, especially in the third verse.

Told my granny I don’t know if I’m really Christian, I really did

Just don’t know whose story to believe, the Muslims, yours, or his

They told me to talk to a therapist and I did

But that don’t change the crazy shit I do, did, and lived

Finally, you have the outro track BOMPTOWN FINEST, which is easily the best song on the album. The simple chords of a guitar looped with minor bass thumps underneath perfectly compliment the rawness of YG’s voice. He reflects on his life coming up in the music business as well as honoring the people in his life that he lost in the process. The song is mellow, yet has a very triumphant feel to it. It is honestly one of YG’s best songs to date.

The reason why I’d call this album his mid-life crisis is because most of it seemed like he lost his sound. I hold YG to a high standard because his past two albums, My Krazy Life and Still Brazy, were phenomenal projects. They are both prime examples to what west coast rap is in today’s hip hop. For STAY DANGEROUS, however, it seemed like he was instead making music that would ride the wave of today’s viral artists. The short hooks attempting to be catchy and lazy bars like on CAN’T GET IN KANADA are not what people want to hear from YG. They want to hear what he does best, the style that he is so successful with, west coast gangster rap. Thankfully, he finally found himself at about track 10, 666 with Youngboy Never Broke Again. By this point, the album sticks to a theme and it works.

Overall, the album starts off very poorly, but gets a lot better by the end.

Rating: 6/10

You can find your link to stream the album here: https://yg.lnk.to/StayDangerous

Standout tracks: BOMPTOWN FINEST, 666, POWER