Album Review: blog era boyz

The cover of blog era boyz, featuring Machine Gun Kelly and Wiz Khalifa sitting on the steps of a front porch.

me and wiz blew up in the blog era,

a lot of my favorite music is still from that time,

tonight we’re droppin a mixtape we made in my living room just like how it was when our careers first started and releasing with no intentions other then to feed the fans

enjoy

blog era boyz

From about 2007 to about 2014, Hip Hop was a part of what’s known as the “Blog Era”. Music was shared on various websites, the biggest of which being DatPiff. This was also the rise of the mixtape. Artists began to build more digital connections with their audience utilizing apps such as Myspace and Tumblr. This era created the rise of several artists that are some of the biggest in the world today, ranging from Kendrick Lamar, to J. Cole, to Drake and many more. Two artists who also started their rise to the top are none other than Machine Gun Kelly and Wiz Khalifa. In preparation for the North America run of MGK’s Lost Americana tour, Wiz and MGK decided to collaborate for the first time in over a decade and work on a collaborative mixtape, titled “blog era boyz.” And considering these two started around the same time, they decided to make a project to pay tribute to the era that helped kick-start their careers. On May 12, they released their first single, “girl next door”, a chill melodic record about a messy relationship with a sound that was perfect for the summertime. On May 20, we got the second single from the album, “everything tatted,” an anthemic love letter to tattoos and their significance, whether to stay recognizable or to pay tribute to something or someone important. The nine-track mixtape would then be released on May 22.

Now, with me being born in 2005, I was a baby when the blog era started. But although I didn’t experience that era in real time, I remember being introduced to the sound of rap at that time. In an album titled “blog era boyz,” I went into it wanting to feel nostalgic, and that’s exactly what this mixtape makes me feel. It’s short in length, only totaling 26 minutes, so it’s not a difficult listen. The beats are, for the most part, the classic cloud-rap sounds from the early 2010s. It feels like you’re entering a time machine sending you 14 years in the past. You get Wiz talking about his love for various substances on a track titled “stoned,” and you also get MGK showcasing his lightning-fast rapping ability on MPH (worth noting that on MPH, Kels explains this project is the warm-up to his upcoming rap album, so it appears he’s keeping himself busy). Across nine tracks, they found a way to channel the energy of the era. I personally want to shine some light on my favorite track on the project: “passport” (which is track seven).

What I love about MGK is his ability to peel the curtains back and get vulnerable with his life. And although Wiz doesn’t primarily do that, he’s done it before on several songs I enjoy. Putting those two together creates a beautiful song called “passport” on a chill, low-tempo beat. Kelly’s first verse highlights the process of being an artist like him and having to move around with drugs, which the duo both use as ways to cope with the stress of life. Kelly raps, “Okay, I'm a little jet-lagged right now, I'm still up in the sky, ain't touched down, I got a hundred stamps in my passport, Got a hundred grams on me I'm a transport.” Wiz raps on his verse about similar flight troubles: “Seventeen-hour flight, I'ma sleep ten, Hit thе stage soon as I land and do it again” as well as his own problems with the lifestyle “Could've said long ago this as good as it gets, But I wake up every day still in the trenches.” On MGK’s third verse, he follows up about the difficulty of keeping your career going and a past controversy of his: “Yeah, and I don't know when I'll return back, so I gotta earn the cash, To keep the same views that I'm used to. Things get more dangerous when you're more famous, so I bought windows you can't shoot through”, “You know that you blew the f*** up when you punch dude once, And now everybody is trying to sue you”. And then you immediately follow up with Wiz addressing his personal struggles, whilst maintaining faith: “Or you got a couple billion views on YouTube, Always got some w**d on you or they assume you do, But them numbers ain't nothin' if your family's strugglin', So I stay hustlin. Sun come up, I get up with it, I'd be goin' even harder if I wasn't rich, Even at this point, pullin' a double shift, 'Cause God don't give you weight you can't lift.” Add to all the introspectiveness of the verses a catchy chorus from Kelly: “Someone keeps calling, keeps me from home. I go through this often, I'm back on my own” and the track ends with Wiz on the outro: “Won't go back, I'm this close, Memories fade away, they come and go”. It’s a perfect collaboration from both of them and an incredibly honest track.

I think for as different as the two are in sound, they have a lot of similarities, and that leads to a very solid project. It covers a lot of ground. You want a girl record that sounds like a radio hit? What about a rap anthem that’ll go crazy at concerts? How about an introspective personal record? Or what about a masterclass in rapping ability? This project has it all. And it dropped right at the perfect time to stay in rotation throughout the summer and just in time for the next leg of the tour (which I’ll personally get to experience in a couple of weeks at the brand-new Morton Amphitheatre in Riverside, Mo.).

My personal standout tracks are “family > everything,” “fill my pockets,” and “passport.”