At the beginning of his career, Hodgy was an able foil. Odd Future was a collective full of rap hellions intent on pushing boundaries as often as they pushed clothing covered in cats, but even within that hectic framework, Hodgy’s voice was always recognizable. The higher register of his voice stuck out next to the deeper rasps of Tyler, The Creator and Domo Genesis, giving each verse a sense of urgency, even if his bars weren’t particularly impressive. Much of the thrill of verses like his Tumblr-referencing breakthrough on “Sandwitches” or the first lines of “Loaded”—a standout from he and producer Left Brain’s duo MellowHype—came from the slickness of his words, how they’d contrast with the richer timbres of his collaborators or the spacey beats of the production.
But as he moved on to solo work, his abilities began to wane. After a number of mixtapes, he released his 2016 “debut” Fireplace: TheNotTheOtherSide, which featured bursts of strong rapping and singing tied to indistinct writing. For all the gusto of his marathon-like flow on “Final Hour” or his ballooning voice on “Resurrection,” it felt like anyone could’ve written most of these songs. This remains the problem on his latest EP Entitled, which shows he’s still a decent performer without telling us why we should care. It is a tighter and more focused experience than Fireplace, but only by virtue of it being five songs long instead of 13.
That lack of focus is ironic considering the track titles spell out a declarative sentence: “Every day, people change into someone we never knew again.” Whether this is some sort of meta-commentary or just a whoa, dude weedism, the thinness of his lyrics don’t do his singing or rapping any favors. While Hodgy switches between both modes with technical flair, bars like “Every day I’m on my grind like a skateboarder/I’m a g, I’m on my rind like a shaved orange” from opener “Everyday” are dead on arrival. Rappers have built entire aesthetics around selling punchlines— Roc Marciano and Pi’erre Bourne are pros at this—but theirs are attached to stories, a distinct worldview that doubles as a glimpse at their personality. Try as he might, empty lines like “Complex like the magazine” from “People Change” don’t have the same mileage.
As a comic rapper, Hodgy’s bars are stale and basic. On top of being unfunny, his lyrics lack detail, a sense of place or geography, or a definite personality to bolster him when he starts telling stories. He comes close a few times with stray nods to Anita Baker songs (“Into Someone”) and the energetic verse that closes out “People Change.” But these fleeting moments quickly dissolve. The love songs lack longing and chemistry, leaning on tired metaphors like “hanging like ornaments” and shallow talk of experiences that never dives into what those experiences might mean. At their most serious, they sound like unfinished campfire sing-alongs.
Which is a shame because Entitled also features what are effectively two MellowHype reunion tracks. Left Brain’s beats on “People Change” and “We Never Knew” mix the haze of early 2010s cloud rap with whizzing drums and synths that expand and swirl like quasars, and Hodgy navigates them effortlessly. It’s almost enough to make you want a new MellowHype project, if only Hodgy would flesh out his writing. Entitled feels like an attempted course correction after a slow few years, but the project doesn’t fail because it’s offensive or poorly arranged. Simply, Hodgy sounds like a bored hype-man with nothing to say.
