![]() ‘Do Better’ was the album’s lead single and is already one of the stand-out hip-hop tracks of the year. The production is soothing, the hook disarmingly simple, setting the perfect stage for Ab-Soul and Joey to drop three great verses, at one the former touching on the juxtaposition between professing otherworldly powers and self-doubt: “I decorate my emotions in metaphors / Tell stories with allegories, so on, so forth / But who gives a shit? The long lost lyricist / N***** got rich talking nonsense.” ‘Moonshooter’ sees Ab-Soul enlist Joey Bada$$, two of modern rap’s oldest souls. ![]() Then the beat switches up, Ab-Soul transitioning into a more energetic flow. The first is dotted with deliberately goofy, forced puns, contrasting the heavy material being discussed. ‘Hollandaise’ is another song of two halves. Its opening track, ‘Message In A Bottle’, starts with a boom-bap beat, the first nod to the older generation of rap, before production transitions to a sparser, distorted, almost shoegaze sound, over which Ab-Soul touches on loss, expectation and the way he views himself – all concepts that will shape the next hour. Herbert begins with a voicemail from Ab-Soul’s grandmother asking what’s to be gained from success if one loses their soul on the way. Like the artist himself, it’s immeasurably more sanguine than the darkness that existed in his earlier projects. Interspersed by verses that are vulnerable, regretful and braggadocious all at once, set across softer production, Herbert makes for uplifting listening, despite the pain present on the record. On Herbert, Herbert Stevens IV comes back to reality. The silence that followed was concerning. saw the MC fall further into conspiracy theories, hampering his relationships and music. However, 2016’s strained Do What Thou Wilt. Where was Ab-Soul? Was he okay? Would he even release music again? Ab-Soul verses have always been deeply personal, revealing obscure, even occultist, personal philosophies. This mystique was present during the early-to-mid 2010s when Ab-Soul consistently released music, but in the last six years of silence, it’s grown further. Hidden behind dark glasses – light sensitivity the result of a childhood bout with Johnson-Stevens Syndrome – and rapping a mile a minute, the wordsmith seemed to inspire awe among even his peers at Top Dawg Entertainment and fellow members of Black Hippy, Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock and Schoolboy Q. The TDE star caps a successful year for the record label with a vulnerable, pained offering in Herbert, which sees him return to reality and music.Īb-Soul, real name Herbert Stevens IV, has always had a wizard-like mystique to him. It’s been six years since Ab-Soul last dropped an album.
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