Review: Rob $tone's "Don't Wait for It" Album
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The San Diego rapper's debut album opens up with a surprisingly pleasant sample of upbeat blues rock integrated inside a seemingly passionate slam poetry-esque commentary by Rob $tone, aka Jaylen Robinson, about the reality of young black America only to abandon any referring context after the fact.
Going into Little Piggy, a combination of chill-hop with nursery rhyme choruses in an almost comedic way, one might assume this fifteen-track debut album might contain a few hidden gems, but the pickings are unbelievably slim, ultimately providing a majority of holes and flaws inside this album deeming it unfortunate.
Stones' very first full-length sounds like two mixtapes put together. According to his Instagram, Stone has been through a lot of ups and downs ever since his 2015 debut single “Chill Bill” with the best merits of that track being the creative and eerie whistling melody created by the producer of the track.
After the critical success, Stone has seemingly had difficulty forming this album into existence by his record company stating on his Instagram that his mixtape was even banned at one point.
But inside the nitty-gritty of the record, most topics inside are all similar in reason.
The undeserved egotistical showmanship, which can be pulled effectively if Stones' lyrical approach was more expressive and clever. But with most, every song having a stole your girl cliche with no other alternative indications of separating himself from dozens of contemporary artists and artists before him, a manifestation of the same trap and “drank” consuming intangible immature frustration the dilutes so much modern hip-hop into a typecasting funnel.
Where the debut single from 2015, “Chill Bill” was lyrically the same, containing a universal beat that dares to have a fun aspect to it. But Stone seemed to drop anything that made his debut single attractive only to throw out poorly produced and badly marketed debut. Giving the 22-year-old the benefit of the doubt, fortunately, he does have years and years to improve his intellectual presence in hip-hop, not to become a rapper like Birdman that consists of over 25 years of music consisting of no evolution.
Hope is not lost for Stone if he continues in his sophomore full-length and takes a more deserved time to cut fat off and tweak any shortcomings, because for this album, it seems like his record company wanted him to release new music as soon as possible before his “Chill Bill” peaking popularity started to tumble over and the end result is simply too difficult to digest.