Since no one else wants to pay this mixtape any mind we will definitely do the honors. For those that do not know Joe Budden is much more than the guy from "Pump it Up" or one of the members of Slaughterhouse. He is a lyrical monster with one of the greatest mixtape series EVER (Mood Musik series). With this installment "A Loose Quarter" he gives listeners even more insight on his life and avoids taking the typical mixtape artist route by having a barrage of features. To start this review off right we will go over the beats first, there are very few misses here, but there was a slight underwhelming feeling from the beats by Aarabmuzik. The true stand out beats were from the intro "Cut From A Different Cloth", Off to The Races, "Dreams", and "More of Me". Lyrically the mixtape is very consistent all the way through, but there is the slight WTH moment when "The Helmet" comes on, but after the awkward transition from hard pounding lyrics and intelligent wordplay comes Joe Budden asking to put "the head in" after forgetting to bring a condom to see hid female company. Which is just a slow transition to "So Good" a hip hop ballad for the ladies as well as "So Hard". After the women are tended to he comes back to more stories of his life and hard hitting lyrics. The songs were pursued in a great fashion making this mixtape have a more original style than an artist rapping over beats just to stay relevant, it was nearly like this was an album, it was easy to follow and diverse. As far as features go there were absolutely none that took away from his songs or overshadowed his lyrical prowess. When it comes to the much debated track "Cut From a Difficult Cloth" about who had the better verse (out of Budden and Ab-Soul) were are here to confirm that NEITHER artist had a better verse, they actually were too good of verses to take credit from either artist, but with lines such as
"Come and spar with a titan
If you ain't knew it's true I'm Zeus and I marvel at lightning"
and
"Cause they fear me in any cypher the hear me in
Only rapping with Soul for the outer body experience"
It makes you think they were actually bringing out the best in each other rather than trying to best the next man. Overall it is easy to say this is MIXTAPE OF THE YEAR. Therefore it is a must listen. Great work Budden.
Highlights: Damn near everything
Lowlights: The autotune of "Momma Said" and "The Helmet"
Beats: 8.5/10
Lyrics: 9.25/10
Creativity: 8/10
Originality: 9.5/10
Overall: 9.25 / 10
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