The Golden State of Rhyming”: Revenge of the Dreamers III

"Golden State of Rhyming"

Dreamville has always been considered one of the more lyrical and influential music labels in music. With the new, and recent additions to the team, they show no signs of letting up. Their newly released album “Revenge of the Dreamers 3”, is a super mash of the self-proclaimed “Golden State of Rhyming” Dreamville, as well as other well-known artists. With appearances from such talents as Young Nudy, Ski Mask the Slump God, Reason, Ari Lennox, and many more. The different styles they bring to the album mesh together quite nicely, making this arguably one of the best albums dropped this year, so far.

The "Boss"

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about Dreamville is how they put J. Cole in a “final boss/mob boss” role. You have to seemingly get past all of them to hear Cole's bars. They have so much respect for him as an artist that they always pay homage to him or give him an introduction throughout the album. For example, there are a rare amount of times J Cole pops up for 2+ minutes on a track on this album. He allows his other artists on the label to get their shine and recognition, while he sits back and watches.

Every Song is a Good Song

As far as the album goes, there is not one song I dislike on it; every song is good to me. There are obviously some I enjoy more than others (Sunset, 1993, Wells Fargo, Costa Rica), but as a whole, there’s nothing I hear and then think “wow I need to skip this one”. It’s very well put together, both musically and artistically. This is one of the only albums this year that I can play start to finish without interruption because it all seems to flow so well together.

The single issue I have with this album is that it seems to have no replayability. As fantastic as I think this album is, I don’t see myself revisiting it quite often. When J Cole dropped “Born Sinner”, I found myself listening to almost every song every day for 2-3 weeks. I’ve revisited this album maybe 3 times since its release, and it’s only for about 4-5 songs on repeat. For this reason, I’m not sure I see this album aging well. Of course, it will be remembered as a fantastic album, but I myself wouldn’t bring this up in my argument for the “greatest album of this generation”. You can tell they were having fun and using the album as lyrical exercise.