Top of the morning. Recently, the young rapper Baby Keem has jumped his way into the rap game with his new album The Melodic Blue. At the young age of 20 years old, Keem is making a big name for himself. Although Baby Keem is rapper Kendrick Lamar’s little cousin, that doesn’t discredit the originality of his recent work. Keem said in an interview, “That’s a sign… maybe my mission here is much deeper.” A star is surely in the making. 

Although the album lacks a general or overall theme, Keem displays his creativity and solo ability very well. Lots of rappers, due to age, have more to talk about or maybe more of a theme relating to their album. Keem lacks general knowledge and has to make songs somewhat repetitive and revolving around the same topic. 

Another aspect of Keem’s album, and every album produced, is the features that are included. The main features that helped the album soar were Don Toliver in the song Cocoa, Travis Scott in the song Durag Activity, and Kendrick Lamar in the songs Family Ties, and Range Brothers. Kendrick Lamar being one of the stronger rappers in this list of features, really helped the album shoot to the top. Eaton High School student, Patrick Preston (24), said, “It was a lyrical masterpiece. Keem and Kendrick are a great duo.”

After the first week of the album being live, it shot to the top of the Billboard 200 chart, now sitting at number 5. After the first week, 53,000 equivalent album units were moved. Album units meaning the number of albums that were sold. 

Many of the album reviews are positive, speaking very uplifting things about songs and the creativity that Keem uses. Other reviews, however, aren’t as supportive. The song Durag Activity got a lot of the heat in these reviews, being called uninspired, and the fact that the Travis Scott feature was phoned in, and random. Student, Walker Copeland (23) said, “When Scott says, ‘Thank God I put them crosses on before we met’ it really hit deep because he had a relationship with the ‘devil’ aka, his ex-girlfriend.” The song was very random to the album, and didn’t follow much of a theme, obtaining lots of hate. 

Besides the occasional “skip” song in the album, the overall turnout was very good. Baby Keem put his name on the map, and produced a well off album that will be listened to for years. The year 2021 has been very big for rap music, and is proving to keep that standard continuing throughout the duration of the year.