Album Review: Young M.A - Herstory In The Making
Brooklyn has been notorious for producing tough and gutter artists, with Young M.A it’s no different. It’s been a long time due for her to drop her debut album ‘Herstory in the Making’ after Ep’s and mixtapes. It’s been a few summers since she came on the national grid with ‘OOOUUU’ that sounded like a calmer Bobby Shmurda song. Anyways, with this latest effort, we see Young M.A stick to what she knows best which is rapping, but she needed more to deliver.
I don’t mind her rapping, she can rap her tail off, songs like ‘NNAN’ is a perfect blend of her rapping and giving the mic to a another artist to sing the hook. Just like that song, I can tell that Young M.A writes herself and spends time on figuring out what she’s going to say instead of freestyling, however, the sound of the track is just too bland. Such as ‘Sober Thoughts’ she gives a powerful verse on her come up and how she was popping before the hits but the bad vocals by Max YB is just an unneeded feature. At times the singers on this album don’t deliver with powerful vocals which hurts the strong lyrics that Young M.A. gives.
“I’m a rapper not a artist do not confuse the art” she says on the outro and the album perfectly shows that. Young M.A sticks to what she knows but with 21 tracks, it starts to blend in together. Especially with the weak start to the album, with the first few tracks being heavy trap beats with low piano or bell keys in consecutive songs I became bored listening to it. Given that Young M.A does rap all over this album, her delivery does at times comes mellow and sleepy which wouldn’t bother me as much if the beat complimented it. But it doesn’t. The beats don’t standout and her vocals are even more boring at times.
The topics she chooses to speak on is understandable, relationship issues, new hoes, gun play, and her come up is something that I expected to hear on this album. However, with that many tracks I don’t want to hear over an hour of the same topics being touched upon over trap beats. I might’ve liked the album more if it was cut down to 10 songs. The rapping is good but the production and delivery is lack luster.