A One Listen Review

Torey D’Shaun and Kevi Morse just released their new EP “Any Last Words” on the 12th. I was just introduced to Kevi last year with his “Barnabas” project and really liked what I heard from him. Today’s listen is my first introduction to Torey D’Shaun. For some reason the cover of the album reminds me of Capone N’ Noreaga or something like that from back in the day. Torey and Kevi are crouched in the woods looking pretty tough like you don’t wanna mess with them. I guess now we have to see if the music matches up.

You Won’t See It Coming – This song fades in with a layered autotune melody. The beat drops in nicely here. Trading flows for a short first verse, and it’s really strong. Torey takes the last verse. This is a great intro track to this EP. Brett Love added a lot here, and I truly didn’t see this coming.

What You See – Catchy repeatable hook laid over big beats and melodic bass. This track is very well done and keeps pace with the first track overall. I found some of Kevi’s rhymes about being made in God’s image to be a little predictable, but still find this track above the bar.

Strong Performances

The Vault – With this song they’re listing the bags they’re in. The beat involves heavy hi hats and higher pitched synths. Kevi and Torey trade lines, and this is the best overall performance so far. Musically the track morphs into a throwback sample that sounds like it belongs in the 70’s. Great track.

Issa Vibe – Wasn’t really feeling the music as it moved into the verses, but it changed up enough that I wasn’t focused on it. It’s got some marimba sounds with bouncing synths. The thing is that once this flow hits you, you’re not worried about the music. “my boss gave me forever money/and nobody can take it from me/you know I’m big stuntin’/yeah you see my boss is my pops now/I got a room in a mansion you see I’m hot merely rocking on the block now…” Torey lights this track up. I need more.

Awkward – I feel like the content and the concepts are all over the map on this EP. I’m not sure it really matters, it’s just obvious to me that Kevi and Torey are having fun. The beat here is really nice and might be my favorite on the project. Throughout this tune we hear melody raps with bars woven in. The song closes out with a snippet of a viral video. It’s the one where the reporter asks the guy in the back of the police car why he’s in custody, and the response is “I dunno, why do you have hair coming out your nose?” We roll from that awkward snippet to an awkward pickup line and we’re out.

Coming Back Down

Keep Your Head Up – “Why are we so concerned with things that don’t concern us?” Just as I was trying to grasp what the track was encapsulating, it’s over. I felt like it was trying to bring about some positivity and point to God’s story, but just as I was about to figure something out the song as over. This track seemed super short, wasn’t very strong on content, and didn’t really do much for me musically either. This track was a let down compared to the soaring excellence presented on the rest of the project.

To conclude, as far as fluidity goes I’m not sure the songs fit with each other on this project. However, each track is so solid on it’s own I feel like I may have found an exception here. I also didn’t feel like there were any strong messages evident in the content of the music. It seemed like I was just invited to listen to two artists have fun for seventeen minutes. Sonically, overall there’s nothing to complain about. The music is tight, the flows and the performances were all above the bar, and it was an extremely enjoyable listen. Considering all of this is wrapped in a tiny package I still have this project slightly above the bar.