Album Review: ‘Summertime ’06’

Three weeks ago, Long Beach rapper Vince Staples announced his debut full-length album, “Summertime ‘06,” via an Instagram post.

The caption began with the phrase “Love will tear us apart” and ended with “Love tore us all apart,” framing a narrative of petty crimes the rapper and his comrades were involved in as middle schoolers during summer 2006.

At the time, Staples saw the gradual descent of his friends into prisons, correctional centers and graves as their habits for theft turned into something more sinister. Whether consciously or not, the tone for “Summertime ‘06,” Staples’ magnum opus, was set.

Indeed, the album sounds like it was conceptually simmering for the nine years between then and now based on the maturity of Staples’ content. Each song of the 20-track LP moves with the same concept-album flow as Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy Award-nominated album “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” and also discusses the black experience in terms of violence, racism and their combined effect on minority youths.

However, unlike “good kid, m.A.A.d city” or even Lamar’s most recent effort, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” the listener is not following the narrator on his journey out of the mess of racism and violence and into a world of tolerance. On the contrary, the narrator in “Summertime ‘06” is caught in a downward spiral and can’t get out.

Each track on “Summertime ‘06” is pessimistic, cold, dark and deep. Staples holds no scathing word or turn of phrase back to express his disgust with the negativity that permeates the black experience in Long Beach.

From the very beginning, the opening lines of the first song of the album, titled “Lift Me Up,” discuss the contempt black citizens are held in, all overlaying a minimalistic yet heavy set of beats: “Hey, I’m just a nigga until I fill my pockets/ And then I’m Mr. Nigga, they follow me while shoppin’/ … So tell me, what’s the difference?”

Every song continues in the same vein, accompanied by stripped-down, bone-dry beats that accentuate Staples’ acidic rhymes. Even the lyrics to “Señorita,” the lead single, are underscored by only a piano motif and the pounding beat below. The instrumentation is enough to rattle windows when the volume is turned up, yet still imparts a cold sense of loneliness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccJF7MEt0NQ

Nevertheless, the album moves with a momentum driven by Staples’ lyrical and musical prowess. Staples delivers heavy raps with varying degrees of inflection, texture and emotion, and his spartan lyrics are chosen with care and precision.

The album’s momentum is also facilitated by the presence of a few guest artists scattered through the album, Jhené Aiko being the most famous. While guest features on major-label rap records can at times cause the recording artist to sound insignificant, the features on “Summertime ‘06” are condensed, repackaged and placed in the background. Thus, Staples dominates completely, allowing him to experiment, warp and twist lyrics and content.

Each piece stands out in its own way, takes a minimal amount of time to skewer the listener with a fierce point and spares no casualties. Even with the 36-second opener titled “Ramona Park Legend Pt. 1” – a medley of offhand beats and seagull calls that ends with a gunshot – Staples ensures that each sound and every word has a place and can rattle the listener just enough to make an impact.

Since the release of “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” major-label hip-hop artists have been eager to lend perspectives and commentary on the black experience and the supremacy of the majority ethnicity.

However, these albums offer a way out, a path to redemption.

“Summertime ‘06” is one of the first to take those experiences and turn them inside-out so that only the heartbreak shows.

“Summer of 2006, the beginning of the end of everything I thought I knew,” Staples said in his Instagram post. “Youth was stolen from my city that summer and I’m left alone to tell the story.”

– Shreya Aiyar