"This Album Is Packed With Gun Sounds, Grams OF Coke And Dead Cops. The Perfect Soundtrack For Mobbing On A Dark Halloween Night"—That's how Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All duo MellowHype's album BLACKENDWHITE was introduced on Tumblr when it was released on Halloween three years ago. With its creepy cover, jarring beats and frequently sinister content, it was, in the true spirit of the holiday, a release engineered to be scary. And let's not forget how scary OFWGKTA were. Coming in the wake of Tyler, the Creator's unhinged, slur-laden Bastard and Earl Sweatshirt's rape-and-murder-filled Earl, right as Odd Future was beginning to generate serious buzz, BLACKENEDWHITE was the three's-a-trend release that confirmed the image of the collective as violent sociopaths, relentless teenage pranksters and provocative game-changers. There was both genuine fascination and serious concern about the ways Odd Future might upend the status quo. On a more basic level, MellowHype was just all about the idea of Halloween: When they weren't busy making their own homemade horror movie soundtracks, they were the guys outside hip-hop's comfortably fun party who were having even more fun egging the house.
This Halloween, MellowHype members Hodgy Beats and Left Brain are no longer out smashing mailboxes or dressing up like corpses, but rather inside, smoking weed and wearing 90s rapper costumes with their friend Domo Genesis as part of the trio MellowHigh. The scariest thing about the group's self-titled album isn't the subject matter, which, even at its most provocative, is basically boilerplate shit-talking, nor is it the jarring beats, which are too crisply mastered to suggest any real threat. Instead, it's a sort of a deeper dread, the kind that sinks in after a couple of Halloweens spent lazily wearing the same "soccer player" or "businessman" costume, when you realize that your ways of doing things that are supposed to be fun have become totally mundane. MellowHigh is not disorienting but rather frighteningly familiar.
The issue, in a lot of ways, is that the people involved have gotten better at making music. Domo has sharpened his focus since his early days as Odd Future's jovial, lackadaisical stoner, and recent releases—particularly Earl's Doris— have seen him staking out a role as the group's go-to guy for accomplished, rapidly delivered verses. Hodgy, too, has matured as a rapper, playing with more complex rhyme schemes and growing more comfortable on Left Brain's increasingly challenging production. With a few years of added practice and improved recording resources, MellowHigh's members have figured out how to consistently deliver, but they've also lost the edge of unpredictability that made a release like BLACKENEDWHITE so compelling. That album's rougher mixes and scattershot approach to rapping felt like a group clamoring for attention and making the best of what they had; MellowHigh is the work of people who know they have their audience's attention doing their best to make more or less what's expected of them.
A few years ago, these would have been the guys making fun of a group making hashtag rhymes like "I'm all about they wives/Stepford" and dropping a lightly Auto-Tuned hook with the phrase "this real shit is going out of style" in it. Now, they're the ones doing it. When Tyler and Earl offer their wacky, charismatic guest verses, it's particularly clear who would be considered OF royalty at this point. Conversely, when journeyman stoner rappers Curren$y and Smoke DZA stop by for a joint torch-passing moment on "HighLife", they seem a bit like Ghosts of Rap Careers Yet to Come, reminders that there's a safe, well-established lane for lyrically proficient dudes who like talking about weed and are willing to tour a lot.
That's not to give off the impression that MellowHigh is complacent, or even particularly conventional. Compared to MellowHype's monotonous Numbers, MellowHigh is an improvement, a show of good faith that Odd Future isn't quite content to settle into rote lyrical recitations and cash in on their lucrative side business selling socks. For one thing, the group takes on the challenge of singing some hooks, particularly on the single "Yu", a prickly G-funk foray with a beat full of minimal piano stabs, and the frenetic "Get'n Drunk," which sees Hodgy Beats taking on the role of a more ratchet Kid Cudi. Meanwhile, crunk anthem "Roofless" fits perfectly alongside MellowHype's other moshpit bangers, a wholly appropriate subgenre experiment. The debt to 90s influences is clear—the entertaining castoff "Cigarillo" explicitly suggests "we should do that Master P shit, where he does all those conversations on at the same time"—but the net is wide, and familiar echoes of East Coast lyricists or groups like Tha Dogg Pound and Three 6 Mafia interact in unexpected ways with Left Brain's consistently abrasive production.
A master of screaming, repellant synths on this album, Left Brain has shifted his sound from low-budget noir to blockbuster dystopian thriller, and he particularly excels on tracks like the looming "Air" and the climactic "Cold World". Elsewhere, the heaving bass line on "Troublesome" makes the whole thing sound like it's happening in a boiler room, and "Extinguisher" uses a sample of an actual scream and thunderous drums to elevate it well above standard boom-bap fare. These beats are huge, intimidating walls of sound. They could use more imposing rappers to stand up to them. It may be that surprising people is a young man's game, and it's time for Domo Genesis and Hodgy Beats to settle into their comfortable roles as confident, reliable spitters. But for an album that sounds as off-the-wall as MellowHigh, it feels like a bit of a cop out to be content with insubstantial rapping.
