I’ll admit it, I bumped “White Iverson” lowkey when it first came out.
The beat was there, and Post Malone seemed to be able to vibe with the melody. It was a solid track.
It was, at least, until you take a milimeter step back and realize that this corny white dude (with fucking cornrows!!!) is calling himself the white Allen Iverson. Post Malone could’ve made that track 100x better (not that much relatively speaking), and the lack of self-awareness (again the cornrows) and general poor taste still would be a deal-breaker.
“White Iverson” should’ve been the end for Post Malone, but no, they had to give him more singles, and a tour, and now he has a goddamn LP titled Stoney.
Donning Wisconsin crew neck sweatshirt, Fetty Wap took Orpheum stage with roaring embrace from crowd
Whatever, let’s dig into it.
(A few listens-through later…)
Ugh, shit. It’s worse than I thought it would be. There are three types of tracks on the LP. One type is tracks that blatantly rip off other (usually) black artists. The second is songs where he tries too hard to be original as if to make up for his blatant jacking on other tracks that leads the song to end up trite and over-contrived. And lastly, there are the songs that actually kind-of work sonically.
Still, even if a track does trickle into that third category, it is already marked permanently, like stolen money from a bank. Phony would be a great alternate name for this project.
For some giggles, let’s dive in to some of the high(low)lights.
The “White Iverson” greets us with “Broken Whiskey Glass,” where he tries to be Country Travis $cott, even replacing his Birds in the Trap with hawk screeches from the desert where he must’ve gotten the melody on the track from.
On “Deja Vu,” he teams up with everyone’s other favorite white dreadsbearer and general headass Justin Bieber to create “Deja Vu.” It’s a fitting title, because it sounds a lot like “Hotline Bling,” except boring. Well done, lads.
On “Fall Apart,” he tries to be a soul artist, but having a soul seems to be requisite for making good soul music. Sorry Post.
“Go Flex” is actually alright vocally and instrumentally, featuring vibrant guitar and trap snares, until you hear the lyrics.
Gems include, “It’s either the pussy or the comma / Man I just want to go fast / Gold in my teeth and on my neck.” Misogyny isn’t a good look on any artist, and it’s hardly limited to Malone, but when you have so little else going for you, it’s that much more apparent and inexcusable.
Those tracks were only selected from the first half of the album, but I think the point is clear.
Post Malone sucks, and now we have this album, more proof than we’ll ever need, to back that up.
PM, if you’re going to take one thing away from your “counterpart”, I hope it’s not his views on practice. You need as much of it as you can get.
