His lane runs adjacent to artists like lil Yachty who feverishly stick to their guns, even when the rap-o-sphere calls for change. Bruce Wayne puts Fetty Wap back on track. If Fetty’s earworm ability manifested a year later, when Apple Music and its competitors had fully taken hold, his trajectory might be closer to “I can skip out on shows” level than “I hope my manager booked that gig” level. Slotting in amidst the transition from iTunes downloads to streaming takeover, Fetty hit his stride before playlists could keep him relevant. Wap’s debut album went double platinum for a reason. Fetty Wap is approaching the molten core with pinpoint accuracy – Bruce Wayne is assuredly fire but whether that means a steaming pile of trash or collection of summer bangers is open to interpretation. He’s dug so far into himself he’s past all the precious metals. Barring his slip into uziism, not even the most elite cover artist could replicate Fetty Wap’s music. He pushes his delivery forward with an “XO Tour Life” type urgency as he flexes over a bass-heavy, recorder laden Thank You Fizzle beat. The title track however must send shivers down Lil Uzi Vert’s spine. He skirts around the hook like a ghost whisperer, but when the beat drops, he’s returned to 2015 Fetty through and through. His r&b crooning floats in a shade higher than when he flexed on “My Way”. Fetty Wap gives the illusion that, as the track title implies, things have changed. That committal nature is subverted on the intro cut, “So Different” and the title track. On “Look at Me” Fetty says “baby” no fewer than 25 times in the two-minute 52 second cut yet the track is harmless and standard fare for the tape, as Fetty commits to a style that earned his riches three years ago. Many of the tracks are vessels to deliver Fetty’s favorite adlibs and nothing more. Stylistically, little has changed between Fetty Wap and Bruce Wayne. With Bruce Wayne, Fetty’s suffering from, to steal a term from the NBA, a heat-check. Continually, throwing his tapes onto Datpiff and YouTube, Fetty Wap has the benefit of never entirely falling out of favor with his audience even though his most recent songs are minimal contributors to his 1.5 billion YouTube plays. Given the ease of releasing music in 2018 however, the term “one-hit wonder” needs a modern analog. Unfortunately for him, everything Fetty lacked in sonic diversity was better capitalized in the trap/808 movement that eclipsed his version of pop-hop/r&b. Front to back the project was catchy and fitting for its September 2015 release date. Fetty Wap isn’t a one hit wonder and his debut album proved that. There are decisively more Yeahhhhhuhh, baby’s” than his last project, almost an admission of what his audience wanted. But there is enough modern romance and melodic sense (and quirkiness, such as the mumbled hook of Time) to make a decent album-within-an-album, and to mark Fetty Wap as a winning new talent in hip-hop.Bruce Wayne plays like nothing has changed since May of 2015, when Fetty Wap took over Memorial Day barbecues and red-light flex-a-thons. With the deluxe edition featuring 20 tracks, this is an achievable goal, and there are certainly low points: DAM and Rock My Chain are run-of-the-mill trap music. The aim of this debut seems clear: to take the things that made Wap so popular so suddenly and repeat until everyone has had enough. This quality only partly explains the 24-year-old’s popularity: he also has a fabulous baritone that lends extra heft to his hooks. On one song, My Way, he even pledges to shoot in the head any man who tries to steal his girl. The biggest hit was Trap Queen, the ubiquitous love song that preaches equality at home and in business (if that business is making and selling crack). This summer, Fetty Wap became the first artist to have four songs in Billboard’s hip-hop top 10 at the same time.
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