I’m at the point in this game where if any rapper comes into the game with a moniker that includes words like “Lil,’’ “Big,” ‘Young,” “The,” or “Slim,’ I’m extremely cautious about wasting my time listening to their music. To date the only MCs that can get away with having those words in their name has been Young Jeezy, The Game and Soulja Slim (R.I.P.). Now we have Southeast Slim. While I applaud the D.C. representative for starting his own label and getting his hood Trump on, I can’t give him too much props for this mixtape.

Son is a little too simplistic with his rhymes and style for my taste. It’s hard for me to think of heads as MCs when they spit lines like, “They ain’t built like me, my bones adamantium/Wolverine of the city, I lay them down to rest man/don’t be the next to get X’d, man!” (“My City”). Aside from the rhymes being that simple and elementary (my man had that “X’d man” metaphor in 5th grade), his lines sound cliché and tired at times. Like on “My Way” when he said, “It’s a gangsta’s paradise, I’m so Coolio/yeah! I’m takin’ shots of Don Julio/I’m making the soundtrack and my life is the movie though.” Who doesn’t claim to have a movie for a life nowadays? (I’ll tell y’all right now, my life ain’t a movie. My life is an Opera. A bunch of women screaming soprano and dudes singing like birds).

Then son tried to get a little too “artistic” with “Blame Single Divas” where he freestyled over a blend of “Blame It (On The Alcohol),” “Single Ladies,” and “Divas” instrumentals. I swear I think he was sending a hidden message to Brüno or Perez Hilton with this one. By the time the beat got to the “Divas” joint my homies looked at me like, “You brought this canned fruit to our cipher?” I felt like Nick Anderson after game one of the ’95 NBA Finals. I had to listen to the rest of this mixtape at home after that, dunn.

I will say that Slim can flow on whatever track he’s giving. Whether the beat requires a slow paced go (“My Life”) or a tongue twisting onslaught (“Sweet Dreams”), SS can definitely keep up. Unfortunately he ends up saying a lot of nothing. His rhymes go nowhere at times and leaves me scratching my dome wondering, “who’s telling him that he’s killing it? His grandmamma? Larry Johnson? What’s going on, Marvin?!” As long as his metaphors go something like, “We’re like role models cause these haters wanna be us,” I just don’t see South ascending past the level of a Bow Wow or Tyga. But hey, look on the bright side, from where he’s at right now he can only go up, right? Well, hopefully…The Infamous O

Hottest Joint: “So Sick”

Weakest Joint: “Blame Single Divas”

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