West coast hip-hop has been slowly but surely building a new foundation for itself: a movement most could say was kick started by The Game. Now, Black Wall Street is continuing construction with Arizona native, Juice. ‘Death Certificate’ is neither a snore fest nor something that feels significantly new. Sure, the production is solid and Juice is pretty consistent throughout the project, it does suffer from a few pitfalls. Looking at the track listing, it’s easy to see that there are some high-profile guest appearances. However, these are a double-edged sword. While not completely dropping the ball on tracks like ‘Never’- which features Scarface or ‘Halos’- alongside Hell Razah and Crooked I, Juice’s verses seem to fall a bit to the wayside in relation to the verses his guests bring to the table. And even if The Game wasn’t mentioned at all in the mix tape (there are numerous shoutouts), it wouldn’t be hard to tell that he mentored Juice: many times throughout the project, he bears a very close resemblance (not to mention a considerable amount of name dropping a la the doctor’s advocate). Speaking of which, it was pretty surprising to find that Game wasn’t on any of the tracks with him. I guess they didn’t want to take any steam away from their upcoming collaborative mix tape. Sure, Death Certificate may not be covering a whole lot of new ground, but at least fans of a traditional contemporary west coast sound will be in familiar territory.

RELATED POSTS:

No related posts.