Flockaveli  – Waka Flocka Flame

Year	Album	Artist	Stars	Score	Genre
2010	Flockaveli	Waka Flocka Flame	★★★	65	Hip-Hop	Southern Hip-Hop	Crunk

If after hearing the main singles from Waka Flocka Flame’s debut album Flockaveli you thought to yourself, “this record’s gotta be made up of dumb, mindless, hyper-masculine, repetitive nonsense with no depth and a bunch of beats that aim to do the same exact thing,” you’d… be pretty close to spot on. Yes, Waka is more of a hype man that repeats hooks and shouts than a detail-oriented emcee. Yes, the majority of tracks are produced by Lex Luger, doing his signature booming Lex Luger thing. And yes, the lyrics, even those introduced by feature artists, are elementary at best and play off tired cliches like partying and violence and sex and crime. 

But reducing this album to just a surface-level academic evaluation of what should make a good or smart hip-hop album ignores how Waka approached the album with reckless abandon, and all the joy and energy and unbridled enthusiasm on display by all parties involved. Because from the very first moment of this record to the very end, it’s thrilling, captivating, ear-drum shaking and turned up to such a degree it’s almost unlike anything else. 

Lex Luger bodies this project, bringing a level of consistency in sound and intensity that perfectly matches Waka’s personality. Each song he produces has a heavy, aggressive cadence that intensifies as it hypnotically circles round and round like sharks in a way that equally makes you want to dance and fight. The few other producers on the project are sprinkled in at the perfect times to prevent Lex’s formula from getting too stale, and add just enough diversity to keep things interesting while still being on message. 

The singles do really capture the spirit of the project well. “Hard in da Paint” is the most intense, in-your-face song on an album that’s almost exclusively intense, in-your-face songs that became a viral, internet obsession. “No Hands” was a smash radio hit with a singable, memorable chorus by Roscoe Dash and a verse by Wale that gave him his biggest platform to that point. “Grove St. Party” is a more subdued club banger with bendy synths on top of booming bass hits. 

But there’s something about listening to all the album’s songs back to back to back that elevates each one a little more. It’s a compounding effect of viciousness. “Fuck the Club Up,” the seventh track, is the first song on the album that’s really a mess. The vocals are kind of annoying and the beat is a little less intense, which I should be able to appreciate, but I just found it kind of uninteresting and a little boring compared to the rest. After that, though, “Homies” is a really well produced song that’s essentially Waka’s version of a slow jam, with an almost Timbaland-esque beat and spacy synths, while still maintaining energy.  

The feature list on this record is also this weird graveyard of all these young and hopeful  musicians from Bricksquad and places like Young Money and Maybach Music, who, for the most part, didn’t really amount to anything significant at all. There are a few memorable names, like French Montana, Wale and Roscoe Dash (who’s only really known for being featured on this record’s biggest hit ). Beyond that, we get YG Hootie five times, Joe Moses, Slim Dunkin, Popa Smurf and  Kebo Gotti all twice, and one feature apiece for Suge Gotti, Baby Bomb, Gudda Gudda, Pastor Troy, Ice Burgandy, Cap, Ra Diggs, Uncle Murda,  Bo Deal, Cartier Kitten and Mouse. Only four of those 16 people even have Wikipedia links to their name, and one of them (Gudda Gudda) just brings you to the Young Money roster. (To quote the great Patrick Star, “Who are you people?!?!”)

But, somehow almost all of them are welcome additions on this album. They sound energized and hungry, like they know this might be one of the best shots they have to impress someone and make it big. Most importantly, they all sound like they’re having fun, and add enough diversity in voices to distract from the fact that Waka Flocka Flame isn’t a particularly engaging rapper on his own. 

I say that though, and two of the purely solo tracks here are solid (although the final track “Fuck This Indusrtry”  just ain’t it). The first is the aforementioned “Hard In Da Paint,” while “For My Dawgs” is a smooth, confident track with a Three 6 Mafia kind of swagger. 

With how repetitive it is, Flockaveli has no business being an hour and 12 minutes long, and you definitely need to be in the right mindset to be able to handle its relentlessness. But, this album has no business being as enjoyable as it is, so enjoy it.