Album Of The Week: YG My Krazy Life

One great thing about great rap albums: They can lead to more great rap albums. When he made Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City in 2012, Kendrick Lamar changed things, showing it was possible to make a rap album with great sweep and ambition that still did all the satisfyingly grandiose things rap albums are supposed to do, and he sold a fuckload of records in the process. Kendrick's album established Kendrick's persona -- the thoughtful kid from the bad neighborhood who gets involved in bad things even though he knows better -- and it used that persona to tell a large, overarching story. And by telling that story, Kendrick became a star. YG was paying attention. Now, YG is not Kendrick. He's a West Coast street-rap everyman, a solid and conversational voice who rides beats ably and has an understated gift for small, human details but who never, until very recently, showed much in the way of ambition. A few years ago, YG was a one-hit wonder; he'd scored with the fuck-them-and-dump-them jam "Toot It And Boot It" in 2009, but he didn't seem to have much more to say. But YG became one of the favorite collaborators of DJ Mustard, whose skeletal, melodically insinuating production style was becoming the dominant sound of West Coast rap. On several mixtapes spread out over several years, YG proved himself a great voice for that Mustard sound -- dextrous and tough, capable of showing personality where needed but also happy to get out of the beat's way. If My Krazy Life, YG's official debut album, had just been the fullest LP-length expression of that DJ Mustard sound, it still would've been a great album. But it's something else: A big, fully-formed concept LP that covers a ton of aesthetic and lyrical ground without ever losing its focus, giving context to YG's character while still playing to his strengths as a rapper. It's one of the most fully-formed and satisfying commerical rap albums I've heard in the past few years, and it absolutely establishes YG as a major voice. If you care about rap music, it's instantly essential.