Over the past two decades, New Orleans has been as influential and powerful as any city in rap, giving us No Limit, Cash Money, and everything that emanated in their wake. But New Orleans has shifted off to the side recently. Master P, Juvenile, Mystikal, and other assorted characters from those labels have tried to rediscover their careers in the blog era with little success, while you're more likely nowadays to hear about New Orleans in the music of Drake than Lil Wayne. But the most devastating blow to the city's viability came when the prolific Lil Boosie, a Baton Rouge native who nonetheless assumed the crown as New Orleans' hometown hero, went to jail in 2010.
The artists of Trill Ent., the label that housed Boosie and was responsible for the city's vitality after Wayne moved to Miami, have since lost their relevance-- with one notable exception. Mouse on tha Track is a producer by trade-- he was behind the boards for the label's true pop crossover tracks like "Wipe Me Down" and "Independent"-- but he's turned to rapping recently, maybe out of necessity. His 2011 mixtape Swagga Fresh Freddie was eye-opening for reviving bounce music, long the backbone of the New Orleans rap scene. But Millionaire Dreamzzz, released as 2012 wound down, raises the bar. It displays a Mouse that has come into his own as an MC, reliant less on what he is reviving and more on his own personality.
Swagga Fresh Freddie is still a whippit of delirious fun, but Millionaire Dreamzzz makes it sound quaint. Where Mouse once occupied a role in his music similar to that of classic bounce MCs who would freestyle call-and-response chants over beats, he has now moved closer to crafting actual rap songs. The model is still more or less the same, but Mouse has a noticeable confidence in himself that he didn't have before. On songs off the previous tape like "Biznezz is Biznezz" or "Stupid Like Them Hoes", it sounded like he was having trouble finding his footing over the jitteriness of beats that spurt every which way, or as if he had chosen vocal takes at random.
But Millionaire Dreamzzz immediately makes it clear that something has changed. On second track "I'm About It", Mouse calmly settles into a lithe sing-song flow that turns the track into one three and a half minute hook. On "Hand Rub", he flips a meme into a piston-shifting party anthem with multiple choruses that weaves vocal samples into the beat without getting overpowered by them. That track is emblematic of how Mouse has changed with his second tape-- his beats are still bonkers, but now they're in service of something greater than just sounding wild. He is not vying for attention or at odds with his beats-- the Mouse of Millionaire Dreamz has harnessed his greatest asset.
But more than anything he is rounding into a viable solo artist thanks to his growth as a vocalist. Two of the album's best tracks are stuck on the end of what is already a long tape, but they prove more than any tracks that Mouse isn't a one-trick wonder. "Sip Some Moet" and "Millionaire Dreaming" are basically R&B songs, but they're also logical extensions of what Mouse does throughout the tape. His endlessly catchy playground flow shifts from sing-song to just singing, allowing his songwriting to shine. R&B is not Mouse's endgame, but the tracks offer that there's still more to come from this unlikely torchbearer.
