The Daily Spin, November 13
B.o.B | Strange Clouds
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: Strange Clouds (2012)
Artist: B.o.B
Link:
Remember when this guy was a thing?
Yeah. I didn’t either, until ‘So Good’ came up on shuffle on my catch-all playlist, and I was rather violently sent back to the year 2013 when Strange Clouds and The Adventures of Bobby Ray were, in all likelihood, my number 1 and 2 albums.
That’s the thing - for a brief moment in the mid-2010s, B.o.B was an icon - he and Lupe Fiasco were everywhere, it felt like, the lingering dregs of late-aughts electro-rap, coming up on the genesis of modern trap music as we know it today, so popularized by Travis Scott among others.
Strange Clouds is the second release, and definitely the more pop-adjacent. You see lingering notes of the heavier rock that Simmons would later oscillate to around the time that he started deciding that the earth was flat - but for 2012, this is an obscenely stacked roster. Features from Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, Trey Songz, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, Chris Brown (ew), T.I., and Lil Wayne are great, but don’t forget MORGAN FREEMAN.
When he’s at his best, it’s not hard to see how he originally drew comparisons to Andre 3000 and other greats of Southern rap - especially with the sawing compositions and slick keyboard riffs that back so many of these verses - and even when the music isn’t great, there’s just something about an album you really loved when you were younger. This is just fun rap.
Rating: 7.7/10
Best Tracks: Strange Clouds; Where Are You; So Good
Worst Tracks: Never Let You Go