Boaz Excels With Real Street Rhymes On Album Debut ‘Intuition’

For Pittsburgh native Boaz, a partnership with Rostrum Records creates some assumptions. Fans who are not yet familiar with his sound may well assume that his new album, Intuition, will sound like Rolling Papers or Blue Slide Park, the crossover friendly, hit-filled albums that helped put Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller, and Rostrum on the map. After all, those albums blew up. Why mess with success? Well, Boaz doesn’t sound anything like what many associate with Rostrum and his 1990s East Coast-inspired rhymes make Intuition refreshing and thoroughly enjoyable.

On the album’s first track, “Champion Flow,” Boaz takes the time to introduce himself. “And on this corner we have…the hustler baby.” The persona of the corner hustler dominates Intuition, and while it’s one that’s used time and time again in hip-hop, Boaz plays it especially well. The whole album is filled with examples of skillful d-boy bars, but he is at his peak on “Rootin’ 4 The Villain.” The song features Jadakiss and Styles P, two rappers who undoubtedly influenced Boaz and who are now his sonic brethren. Over an eerie piano, the three MCs trade verses reminiscing about their drug-dealing pasts. Boaz remembers being “young and successful, by doing what the hood tell us,” while Jadakiss delivers classic ‘Kiss lines like, “Now I’m coming through there in the coupe or the Brazilian / They were on the stoop hating now they’re rooting for the villain.” Boaz’s chemistry with the veterans is truly excellent and the song is stellar.

While Boaz’s more generic street rhymes are delivered skillfully enough to remain interesting, the album becomes really captivating when he moves past the common topics and takes it to a deeper, more introspective level. The album’s title track sounds like a smoked-out rework of Ludacris’ “Growing Pains,” with nostalgia- filled bars like: “Fell in love with music fucking with my older brother / Don’t change the channel that’s Dr. Dre and Ed Lover.” From there, the content gets more serious and more interesting. He goes on to spit, “Mama turned addict and little brother grabbed the automatic / Thought revenge and lost his life before he had it.”

The great consistency of Intuition is Boaz’s flow, which rarely escalates above a laid-back, Curren$y-esque rasp. His delivery is welcoming and his slowed down, deliberate pace gives all the rhymes a conversational vibe. While this is to be expected from his previous work, Boaz flaunts a hidden talent on Intuition: his singing. On song after song, he handles the hook duties, with a singing style reminiscent of smoother, softer, Get Rich Or Die Tryin'-era 50 Cent. His crooning is at its best on the infectious hook for the Mac Miller banger, “Don’t Know,” which is one of the album’s high points.

Boaz establishes, and thrives in, a clear comfort zone. It’s when he tries to leave that space that the album runs into problems. “Trap,” which as the title indicates features contemporary trap drums and synths, is a boring and obvious attempt at a club song. On the chorus, Boaz is “trying to turn up to the max,” but it sounds more like a cliché than an actual desire. Similar problems exist in “How We Law” featuring Dancehall mainstay Junior Reid. Both songs are generic and seem out of place in the greater scheme of the album.

Despite some missteps, the album is consistently enjoyable. Again and again, Boaz provides skillful street-wise bars and leaves us with a few possibly career-making gems. As hip-hop’s sound moves in about a million different directions, it’s great to hear someone excel in a tried and true style. Boaz does just that.—Max Goldberg