Mar 18 2009
New Album Review - Joe Budden - Padded Room
Hits: Now I Lay, Don’t Make Me, In My Sleep, Exxxes, Adrenaline, Angel In My Life, Pray For Me, Family Reunion (bonus remix) (ft Fabolous, Ransom and Hitchcock)
Strikes: The Future (ft The Game), Happy Holidays (ft Emmany)
Balls: If I Gotta Go, Blood On The Wall, I Couldn’t Help It, Do Tell
Going into 2009, this album was top 10 if not top 5 on my list of albums to look out for. And how the hell could it not have been? Even without releasing an album in the past couple of years, dude has been completely ripping the rap game apart. Starting from his first Mood Muzik mixtape, to his subsequent releases in the series, to the Halfway House EP, to his appearances with the Slaughterhouse supergroup, I’ve checked for every project he’s been involved in and have not been disappointed. So naturally, I looked for his sophomore release with a good amount of excitement and high expectations.
With all that said, by the end of this album, I was completely underwhelmed. There were a good number of moments in which you could feel Budden’s hunger and in those moments the album managed to shine. However, there were a surprising number of moments in which he sounded bored and as if rapping was the last thing on his mind. Not at all what I’d expected from the same rapper that gave us Mood Muzik 3. The bigger problem, however, is the production on the disc, which is handled entirely by relatively unknown producers. Mind you, I’m not knocking on unknown producers and some of my favorites currently would more or less fall into that category (Remot, Ravage, Afta-1 and Freddie Joachim). However, these producers provided extremely average beats that makes me wonder if Joe Budden may be another rapper infected with the Ras Kass syndrome.
As a whole though, the album isn’t entirely bad and mostly due to Budden’s rhymes, there are more tracks on here that I would listen to than tracks I would skip over. But that ratio is dangerously close and I know that Joe Budden has more potential than he’s shown on here. Check it out at least once, but if you’re more of a fan of hip hop in general, you would be better off buying a copy of Mood Muzik 3.5 and waiting for the opus magnum that he will one day undeniably drop.
WTF Moment: Nobody from Slaughterhouse was able to drop a guest verse on this? Really?!
