I differentiate between the verses you posted and his post-2010 stuff. As far as the overall quality of the verses, yeah, I'd say Mike's been pretty much at the same level on most releases. But a lot of people on here refer to verses like the earlier stuff you posted as his "nerd rap" verses. I make a similar distinction. There tends to be a bigger vocabulary in his early stuff. Reading My Eyes is also a rapid fire flow. Way more distinctive than what he's done in the 2010s.
OK. Heres what I have to say: The song is catchy and great. The instrumental is dope. The verses are good. Mike's verse is one of the best I have heard from him in a long time.But the chorus....Oh the chorus. The chorus ruined the whole song for me. I couldn't tolerate how Chester said "here". And the Chipmunk's part! You know I am ok with LP being pop in this album but there are some modern pop elements which I will never tolerate. But this is a new direction for them so I will let it sink. I am still hyped for OML. Not every song/album from an artist has to be their best or groundbreaking. Sometimes new and fresh stuff is good enough.
Good shit like this still makes me wonder why Heavy was the first/lead single. This and Battle Symphony are so much better.
This song is fucking dope. Holy shit. Was NOT expecting that. Idk what context the "sarcastic" comment was made in, but that sounded pretty serious in tone to me. Loved it. My only gripe: no intro. I feel intros establish the tone and identity of a song. Overall this album is offering a lot of amazing things though. I've heard 3 full songs and bits of 3 others, and I love what I'm hearing. This is the perfect follow-up to THP.
That was a damn good track... best one released so far. It seems to keep getting better with each track. I absolutely love chesters hook and I don't think I ever heard Mike go so fucking hard on a track with such a flow and the other dudes killed it to. Beat is dope af. Definitely one of my favorite LP songs now.
Mike has been slowly evolving from metaphoric rapping to swagger rapping since the very beginning. You can tell the transition even since MTM.
That's the thing though, all music is "meh" by that logic. I mean, outside of the .00001% who literally redefine a genre, the only determining factor is whether you like it or not (unless you're looking at technical proficiency or something, but that doesn't really have anything to do with quality). Point is, there's no "pill to swallow". Subjectivity's a bitch.
Yeah thinking about it now this song sounded a lot more serious than I expected judging by what he said, lol.
Yeah. So I get what Minus is saying - Mike has always done what we can call "brag rap." But the first verse on Reading My Eyes shits on Good Goodbye and pretty much anything he's done in a really long time on a technical level.
I've heard it, and it's exactly what I expected based off of people commenting. Mike's verse is the most appealing in terms of 'flow', and I liked Stormzy's part as well. Much like the I'll Be Gone remix, Pusha's verse was my least favorite. I know Push is talented, but every time I've heard him on a Linkin Park track, I've been less than impressed. It feels like he puts out lesser quality rhymes when he appears on an LP track, and I cant quite figure that out. I liked Chester's singing, once again he's impressing me with his versatility. The instrumental is wonderful too, especially in the last chorus. That being said I can see this being a throwaway track in the context of the entire album, and an outlier as Mike put it. I give it a 7/10.
If anything, these songs show just how diverse Mike was with his rhymes at one point. Also, his more sophisticated wordplay cannot be denied in "Step Up" and "Reading My Eyes", as the verses he's been laying out lately haven't come close to what those songs achieved, with the exception of his deliveries in THP. I may be in the minority, but I really liked what Mike did with his verses on THP, battle rap and all. It was his aggression and confidence that did it for me,as well as the wordplay. Those THP verses, in some ways, reminded me of the "good old days", when Mike could come up with incredible verses in songs like Dedicated, And One, High Voltage, Part of Me, and so on. Edit: Other notable examples of pre-THP songs with good or great wordplay and delivery include: Victimized, Until It Breaks, When They Come For Me
The verses in Reading My Eyes are pretty fucking stupid. It's using big words for the sake of using big words with no regard for actually saying something significant. The entire song is like an 18-year-old half-white kid going "look at me, I can rap fast and use big words, I'm pretty badass amirite guys?!" Oh wait, that's exactly what Reading My Eyes is.
It sounds like Mike is channeling his inner Ludacris. I'm really not sure how I feel about the song at all. I guess I'll give it a few more listens but this one is probably one I'll be skipping.
The pill to swallow is that I'm realizing maybe Linkin Park isn't that good... I've always been a huge fan but they can only release so many songs like the last few until I reach the point of being like... ok this is cheesy.
I always liked Mike's metaphors the most when it came to his raps. It's a lot more relatable and personal than the swagger raps are for me.
The track is pretty solid. Mike's verse is the shit. BTW its officially released on iTunes in India now
Okay? While using big words for big words sake, he also manages to use a shit-ton of multisyllabic rhyming to form coherent lines and thoughts, even if they are pretty fucking stupid. All while rapping with a pretty quick flow. Good Goodbye features garbage like "I've been here killing it Longer than you've been alive, you idiot And it makes you so mad Somebody else could be stepping in front of you And it makes you so mad that you're not the only one There's more than one of you" So if I'm gonna get the same kind of content from his verses either way, I'm pretty sure I'd rather have the kind that manages to impress on some sort of technical level.
I've been here for that long and I'm not following what you're talking about. This makes me wonder even more why you've stuck around this long if you feel this way.