The Daily Spin, October 27
Vince Staples | Summertime '06
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
300 albums in. I’d absolutely be lying to you if I envisioned following through on a project to this extent. Thank you all for your continued readership and support.
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: Summertime ‘06 (2015)
Artist: Vince Staples
Link:
From the first beach-weary synths that bleed out of ‘Ramona Park Legend Pt. 1’, Vince Staples makes clear that this isn’t the summer that most are accustomed to - but that isn’t a bad thing, by any means.
Staples is refreshingly straightforward with his verses here - while many of his contemporaries prefer to rap around everyone that might be listening, as though it’s just them and the mike and if you happen to pick it up, bully for you, Vince instead positions you directly in front of you and asks you to maintain eye contact for an hour. It’s direct, pushy, and a position that not enough people angle from in their work.
Summertime ‘06 is the work of No I.D., known for his immense production discography and his mentorship of Kanye West, with assistance from Clams Casino and DJ Dahi among others - which is impressive in its own right, but even more so considered the differences in style present among those producers. The record is cohesive, and though there are small differences in each track, it’s never to the point where it doesn’t have a very distinctly Summertime sound to it - hard, uneasy, weather-worn basslines like those on ‘Norf Norf’, brittle percussion that almost bends into fragility, like it’ll snap if you hold it longer than a heartbeat, cold and unfriendly melodies that pound into your brain with all the unrestrained energy the melodies can’t contain.
Across 20 songs and 59 minutes of music, Summertime ‘06 never runs long, but the weariness of its subjects is deeply apparent, the sort of sound that exudes exhaustion - a plea for a moment of rest.
Rating: 9.3/10
Best Tracks: Jump Off The Roof; Senorita; Norf Norf
Worst Tracks: Loca