Album Review- Tyga- Hotel California

So Tyga is often maligned by people of my generation. He isn't the best rapper and he looks like a miniature giraffe with all of the tattoos. In fact he is like a less cool version of Wiz Khalifa. One of the earliest signees to young money, he has had a steady if unspectacular career and almost directly on the heels of Lil Wayne's latest, He is out with "Hotel California"

The album goes right in with a decent beat designed for Tyga and Lil Wayne to just rap to their hearts content on "500 Degrees" which also happens to be the name of one of weezy's early albums. Unfortunately, the hook is lame and Wayne's verse is full of pause moments and lazy bars. "Dope" features Rick Ross and is more random rap from Tyga and Ross seems to have better things to do as well.



Now "Diss Song" is interesting as Tyga spits to a homie he is no longer in touch with asking what happened and speaking on their situation with the chorus serving as notice the bars are just a question and not subliminal shots. Chris Brown handles the hook on "For The Road" which is a straight forward song for the ladies as they suggest before the break up they get one more in. "Get Loose" is a club track for the Hyphy Bay area crowd. Meanwhile "Hit em Up" featuring Jadakiss is more throwaway fodder for mix tapes.



"Show You" with this year's T-Pain, Future sounds like it's entirely in this off-key auto tune but Tyga's voice just sucks and the song is nothing particularly special. Now "Molly" is a club banger with a good beat, a subject that isn't taboo and a feature from Wiz Khalifa and Cedric Gervais. I'd be remiss if I said I didn't bob my head to this though i don't like the idea of promoting Molly any more than I liked Ja Rule's promotion of Exstacy years ago. Wiz is also on "M.O.E." or music over everything where they try to personify music. "Hijack takes it bag to normal bragging raps about how Tyga will take your chick and lives his life. Tyga also remakes the Toni, Toni, Toni classic 'It Never Rains in Southern California" with "It Neva Rains" along with The Game. This song isn't as bad as I felt it was when it first comes on though the auto tune was not needed.



"Get Rich" is more balling while "Enemies" is about when starting a new relationship and hoping it stays cordial. "Drive Fast, Live Young" is a mid-tempo joint about having fun and doing just what he says. Once again, Tyga for some reason auto tunes himself although his voice is already whiny. The album ends on "Palm Trees" which has a really solid beat that has that throwback soul feel to it but the bars aren't anything special, he spits alright but doesn't black out.


Look I was expecting a worse album but the problem is way too often Tyga doesn't have anything to say. The songs are disposable. Now when he does have a subject, he can give you some decent bars such as on "Diss Song". Even Palm Trees and 500 degrees aren't bad per se, but they aren't anything more than average songs of dudes rapping and the punchlines and high points are out of this world. Most of this album you won't be listening to more than once unless your ipod is on shuffle and then you still might skip it. Try as hard as he might want to be more than just a superficial artist the lack of depth to Tyga is his downfall.

Edit: I almost forgot I wanted to comment on Tyga's raping of classic hip-hop. This is why we need a council, because there is no reason Tyga should be trying to recreate 'Hit Em Up' and swiping the hook in part from No limit. This kind of watering down of the culture cannot be allowed cause this dude isn't good enough to do it justice. Now this wasn't on the album but there is a youtube video with Pac vocals being desecrated by this awful-voiced rapper. I mean this is like the Biggie duets level of nonsense. Please stick to your lane Tyga.

Rating: 2/5