Album Review: Logic- Bobby Tarantino II Mixtape

One of the hottest rappers in the game, Logic, finally followed up on his popular 2016 mixtape Bobby Tarantino.

Logic is a rapper out of Maryland, who came from very humble beginnings to become one of the most interesting rappers over the past few years following a release of a bevy of mixtapes and his debut album Under Pressure, which received a lot of critical praise.

Over the past four years, he to be on a pattern of alternating yearly between mixtapes and studio albums, with 2015’s release of The Incredible True Story, and two years after that 2017’s Everybody, each of which were popular among fans and critics and were awarded gold plaques by the RIAA.

That trend followed with the drop of Bobby Tarantino II, which comes two years after the first mixtape in the Bobby Tarantino series.

Before I get into diving deep into BTII and its tracklist, the word “mixtape” is very critical to the judgment on this record. A Logic album is usually a grand opus to some big topic or idea, which plays out in a very cinematic fashion. On the other hand, Logic mixtapes tend to lean away from a concept and have him just spitting about whatever pops into his mind. Logic has a very different persona between these two as evidenced in his lyrical content.

For the most part, I thought that Logic came through with an overall solid effort on this tape.

Logic always has a flow that ranks among the top in the rap game right now. Even if his lyrics sometimes aren’t the most amazing in a couple of spots, his speed and relative versatility make his music catchy and enjoyable.

Also, the instrumental palate is pretty diverse to go along with Logic’s rapping pretty well on most cuts. The song “Warm It Up” features a nice old-school boom bap rhythm that mixes with the intro perfectly. On “Overnight,” the instrumental sounds like it was pulled out of an old 8-bit video game on Nintendo or something. And despite the drum pattern on “Indica Badu” sounding way too much like the beat to “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” by Kendrick Lamar, the track sounds really woozy and really sets the tone for the song.

Finally, the features on this thing are absolute killers. Wiz Khalifa drops one of his best guest spots in awhile on “Indica Badu.” Big Sean comes through with a very charismatic verse on the song “Wassup,” with one the best lines dropped in it being “So blessed, I might just make a gospel album.” Gotta love Sean Don. And if you throw 2 Chainz on any song, you know that he will go in. His contributions to “State of Emergency” are no exception. “Balling hard like the ACC.” Yes you are 2 Chainz. Yes you are.

This mixtape is not without its flaws however.

Logic always seems to dabble in a little bit of what a lot of other contemporaries are doing. On Everyday, it was Kendrick Lamar, and on this project, it seems he is digging into the bags of autotune crooners, namely Lil Uzi Vert, Trippie Redd, and Travis Scott. Logic seems to lack his sense of personal style, with his influences and contemporaries being worn on his sleeve so much that they really take away from what he’s doing.

Take for instance “Wizard of Oz,” which sounds like a song that got cut from Travis Scott’s Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight, right down to the ad-libs.

The singing that is inspired by the previously mentioned artists straight up bad. The hook on “BoomTrap Protocol” sounds like a store brand rendition of a Lil Uzi Vert song. The second verse on “Overnight” sounds very lazy and barely passable. The singing on “Everyday” is awful from start to finish.

I do like most of the tracks on here generally, and I think that Logic not trying cram an ideal down people’s throats is a good thing since many of his albums, most notoriously Everybody. His more casual mixtape approach is a much-needed breath of fresh air for him. But there are just a few flaws that prevent this from being exceptional.

Rating: 6.5/10