DJ Cannon & Mack Main: This is Just a Mixtape Vol. 1

Since hopping on Lil Wayne’s  “Got Money" Remix, Mack Maine’s been under the street light so to speak. He’s been talked about in barbershops and corner stoops. His style and swagger appeals to today’s youth and seems to be building steam with every passing day. He finally dropped This is Just A Mixtape Vol. 1 and I gave it a listen to see where son’s coming from.

My first impression was that Mack Maine makes Yung Berg’s flow look like it’s on Big Pun’s plane.  Aside from sounding damn young, Mack Maine’s sentences just don’t mesh well together. Not because he can’t rhyme (Even though his rhymes and lyrics are simple), but because he can’t spit it correctly. On the “Stupid Engineers” skit he proclaimed to be an artist who doesn’t write or think. So that might explain why his rhymes and flow sound as effortless as minute rice.

On “Bankhead” he states, “I got a bad bitch, yeah she from Bankhead/she already told me that her daddy, yeah, he bank bread/she said her baby daddy, he just a bum/he ain’t never fuck her right/she ain’t never even cum/she said the rubber broke but she don’t believe in abortion/and he’s a pussy nigga, he don’t give her her portion/he be hustling on the set but he ain’t bout it/I be hustling all the time when it’s crowded/and she from Bankhead/that bitch from Bankhead/that bitch a bad bitch, yeah she from Bankhead.” Makes you wonder where his shorty resides, no? Maybe in the south he killed it with that rhyme, but to me it sounded like he’s just making it easier to say that Lil Wayne is the best rapper in the game.

Speaking of which, Lil Weezy jumps on “AK-47” and blesses Mr. Maine with a pretty dope hook and a verse representative of how “hot” Wayne has become. The rock star also lends his vocals to This is Just a Mixtape (Pretty dope in a rock-ish way). That song turned out to be the hardest song on the mixtape and it can’t even be categorized as hip-hop. It’s rock.

The production on this mixtape was off the chain and Wayne’s appearances definitely helped the cause, but at the end of the day Mack’s simplicity proved to be his undoing. His hooks were actually song worthy but his verses did him no justice. The rhymes weren’t next level and his flow was about average. He seems to be the Jim Jones of the south at this point. He spits hard gangster and pimp ish, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been heard or said before and he dumbed down lyrically for all to understand and not think twice about. How do you expect to school rappers when your own rhymes and lyrics are elementary?-The Infamous O

Hottest Joint: “Let It Rock”

Weakest Joint: “Boo Checks In”