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Dec 18, 2015If Darkest Before Dawn really is a prelude to the record King Push to come, you have to wonder where Pusha T will choose to take his music next. Making it deeper, angrier, darker, and more foreboding doesn’t seem possible.
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Jan 4, 2016Pusha delves into risky artistic terrain and imparts flashes of lyrical genius only a few have the pedigree to pull off. The Prelude has once again positioned Pusha as an emcee with the ability to put forth a legendary piece of work.
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Dec 18, 2015Timbaland, Kanye and Diddy are among the big names on the boards here, battling it out with lesser known producers, all gleefully playing to Pusha's style.... If Pusha T can keep this up throughout King Push proper, the forthcoming main event, he'll have the hip hop album of next year too.
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Jan 19, 2016King Push's Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude is a damn good record, but it is not flawless.
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Dec 17, 2015While MNIMN's faults lie in its sequencing and filler, Darkest Before Dawn is concentrated and trimmed. And Pusha T, strengthened.
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Dec 21, 2015His development extends beyond just his writing. Pusha picks a wide-ranging group of thumping beats from noted rap greats like Kanye West, Q-Tip, Metro Boomin, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and most effectively, Timbaland.
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Jan 4, 2016The beats sound like money, and the raps are whip smart and cleanly tailored.
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The WireFeb 18, 2016It's an unlikely triumph of personality, a glacially slow decay of his icy facade revealing an earnest dedication to his craft, in its own way every bit as spiritual as his brother's more orthodox practice. [Feb 2016, p.56]
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Q MagazineFeb 4, 2016It's a collision of classic rap skills and singular beats that makes this album outstanding and far more substantial than its "prelude" billing implies. [Mar 2016, p.110]
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Jan 11, 2016The Prelude finds T’s distinctive flow and trademark “yeuch” of disgust allied to uncommercial but excellent beats.
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Jan 7, 2016Most of its 10 songs last just two or three minutes. It's too good to be a mixtape and too short to be an album, raising the stakes even higher for the album proper.
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Jan 7, 2016Pusha T takes a tour through the violence of the past 18 months, from Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore to the shocking phone videos that document death in damning detail but rarely lead to convictions. With Darkest Before Dawn, Pusha T has created his own hip-hop Trojan horse.
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Jan 4, 2016Each track feels like a different corner of Pusha T’s mind, all coming together to form a complete brain, glimmering with glitz and glamour on the surface and exploring darkness and deep thought below. If this is ‘The Prelude’, imagine what Pusha T can do with the rest.
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Jan 4, 2016The album just doesn't flow as well as his monolithic 2013 effort My Name Is My Name, but as a mere "prelude" to the next LP, it's miles above "throwaway" and comes with the quality control that would put it in the top tiers of both the mixtape and street release formats.
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Jan 4, 2016A remarkable return to form by one of rap’s finest wordsmiths, it’s Pusha’s most focused and cohesive solo effort to date, and one of hip-hop’s strongest long-players of 2015.
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Dec 22, 2015The weight of Darkest Before Dawn doesn't simply rest on Pusha T's lyrical weight (literal and figuratively), but also his ability to tap into the strengths of his producers, like Boi-1da's thunderous drums, Kanye West's soulful grandeur or Timbaland's unorthodox layering.
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Dec 21, 2015Belying its also-ran billing, Darkest Before Dawn... is a minor masterpiece of dark, smart, modern hip-hop.
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Dec 18, 2015On DBD, he delivers music that can’t be clumped with contemporary hip-hop.
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Dec 18, 2015Every note fits. Every key has a keyhole. And King Push proper would be hard-pressed to beat this small wonder of great cameos (the always-undervalued Jill Scott, sampled Biggie), productions (in a first, Timbaland manning the boards on the eerie “Untouchable”), and block quotes (“I’m the L. Ron Hubbard of the cupboard”) here.
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Jan 4, 2016The most interesting moments of the album are when Pusha feels his way around the darkness instead of embracing it so willingly.
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Dec 21, 2015It isn’t overly ambitious, but after more than two years without an official release it is still a treat to hear Pusha T, even if he stays largely in his cocaine comfort zone.
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Dec 17, 2015Though hip-hop gets more melodic and vocally expressive every year, Pusha keeps his cadences steely and his bars hitting like haymakers, maintaining that ice-cold Nineties feel even when he’s taking on modern troubles.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 171 out of 186
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Mixed: 5 out of 186
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Negative: 10 out of 186
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Dec 18, 2015
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Dec 29, 2015
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Feb 14, 2016