Well I'll give the album some credit, in that Free TC is probably the most effort out of Ty that I've ever seen from him, and yet the albumWell I'll give the album some credit, in that Free TC is probably the most effort out of Ty that I've ever seen from him, and yet the album has a whole is a mess, but an interesting one. Free TC is trying really hard to have a concept all throughout the 16 songs, but the album has a whole doesn't know what it wants to be: is it suppose to be a story about Ty and his younger brother TC before his arrest, or is it just another collection of Ty dealing with women troubles, past relationships, and stealing your girlfriend? Honestly, I'll never know, but the album for me is just decent at best.
So the best place to start for me is Ty Dolla $ign himself, and look his style of sing-rap is either take it or leave it, as he often sounds half asleep on most of his verses and sometimes doesn't even know what the hell he's even talking about, which I can understand, it is his style of singing. But on this album, Ty does at least put some more effort into his delivery, and the parts where the autotune is stripped back like on "Solid" or "Horses in the Stable" he actually sounds not bad in a chilled out kind of way. But the vocal effects are still largely here, and can be a little distracting to me, like on the hidden track "Wherever" where Ty actually goes into a high falsetto, and yet effects are thrown onto his voice making it sound even more like he's trying way too hard to pull off prince level vocals, sorry dude but you're nowhere near the level of Usher.
Which now takes us to the instrumentals, now Ty actually went out of his way to get strings and orchestra to play all throughout this album, and has a whole it's a mixed bag. As they can play pretty well on certain tracks like "Know Ya" which has one of the better beats by DJ Spinz and Metro Boomin' of all people and on the track "Miracle" creating something that would've come off of Justin Timberlake's 20/20 albums back in 2013. But they can also be either overlong or poorly mixed, take for example the opening "LA" which has the strings infused with horns and a G-funk instrumental, but added along with the vocal effects, it ends up being an overcooked mess. Or on "Credit" where it goes on for over 6 minutes, the song could have at least been cut at least a minute. That being said, there are other instrumental moments that I do like, the bright pop friendly "Saved" produced by DJ Mustard, the acoustic guitars played throughout "Solid" and "Horses in the Stable" and the tropical house flavored "Bring it Out of Me" is undeniably catchy and easily the best song on the album.
But now we come to lyrics, which have been a problem for Ty ever since I listened to Beach House last year, in that Ty sings about topics that have been done to death in Hip-Hop and R&B, but what's worse is that he ends up making the lyrics sound pretty stupid. Take for example on "Wherever" Ty sings about driving up to his girls parents house in a jeep, and then sings about f**king her in their driveway, making me forget about how "Miracle" is discussing black culture today. Then there's "Horses in the Stable" where Ty sings about previous women he's "gone out with", and that he wanted nothing more than to have sex with them, classy. And we come to the R.Kelly duet "Actress" which is exactly what you think it is, where the two men compare hot women to famous actresses, and they do it in the goofiest way possible, which I would've liked if the instrumental wasn't so drowned in reverb. And while I can appreciate "Saved" for Ty not saving a girl who has screwed him over in the past or "Credit" for Ty talking about working things out with a girl he's currently with, the rest of the album is filled with his typical "party" music topics: smoking weed, having luxury goods, and using girls just for sex, like I haven't heard that before. But what's worse is that instead of sounding fun and energetic, it's trying way too hard to sound dark, apparently it's meant to make you look cool instead of have fun, lovely. The worst example of this is "Blase" which somehow has slowly become a hit here in the US, even though it doesn't sound remotely like anyone is having any fun.
And finally, we have our guest stars, where they aren't given much to do. Kendrick Lamar gives a pretty good verse on "LA" talking about house parties and living in the hood, Trey Songz also has a decent if not memorable verse on "Know Ya" which I liked, and TC sounds great on "Miracle" props to him for that. But otherwise, Brandy is only used for backing vocals on "LA" and Sevyn Streeter continues to underwhelm me on "Credit" plus Kanye Wests verse is only him singing, and Diddy only says some lines on their song "Guard Down" plus Future and Rae Sremmurd continue to annoy me as usual on Blase.
So look in the end, the album has some interesting ideas and a few good songs, but not enough for me to enjoy this. For some listeners and critics I can understand why you'll end up loving this album, I'm just not in the same wheelhouse as you.… Expand
