MITHREADS REVIEWS: Prima Donna by Vinnce Staples

I have been in Vince Staples’ corner telling people to watch out for him ever since he was doing features for Earl Sweatshirt, his features on Earl’s Doris and I Don’t Like Shit I Don’t Go Outside were show stealers. I first started messing with his own music with the Shyne Coldchain 2 mixtape, and became more and more impressed as he dropped the Hell Can Wait EP and last year’s double album, Summertime 06. What I have always admired most about Vince Staples up until now is his blunt honesty in his lyrics, and his unmatched work ethic in the rap game. No corny dance gimmicks, no drug glorification, no nonsense. With every project, I know that beats that bang, flow for days, and nonstop bars that are worth reading into are abound if Vince Staples’ name is on it.

 

While I loved Summertime 06, and felt it had a lot of Vince’s best material to date, I did have one glaring criticism, and it was that I felt the album was a little too long for its own good. I feel like there were a few filler tracks or songs that didn’t get the chance to be fully realized as ideas. I think if Summertime 06 was cut to a single album, with maybe a few bonus tracks, it would’ve been a near-perfect record. Here, Prima Donna is an EP, so the concern that it’ll be too long is out the window, but short projects leave little room for error. Thankfully, few errors are to be found.

 

Vince Staples has been hanging out at music festivals a lot lately, and it’s starting to show. Hell, he says he’s about to “Pull a Wavves on the Primavera stage,” on the titular track. Hanging out at these festivals seems to have broadened Vince’s horizons as far as his ear for production,and this new EP sees Vince incorporate these newfound influences. Songs like “Big Time” have strong EDM influence, while “Smile” has a rock guitar solo in the mix. He also drops an ATLiens sample that’s both hot and a good laugh at the people who love to ridicule Vince’s “disrespect” to the 1990s. It’s nice to hear Vince flirt with new sounds on this EP, and I hope that this is only a taste of what is to come on his next full length record.

 

Lyrically, Vince is on point as usual. My favorite rappers have always been the ones that have songs that rock the crowd, but also have lyrics worth reading into. If I were apply that to someone like Vince, I’d look at a song like “Señorita.” It’s a song with a beat that knocks and gets the people bouncing, and a hook by Future. It’s a recipe for a hit. However, read into the lyrics and you’ll see it’s not a party song really, but about the struggles of trying to break out of a negative environment. Here on Prima Donna, Vince takes it a step further. He’s broadened his topical pallette of lyricism and gotten more introspective. The EP is strung together in a similar way Kendrick has done in the past, with a few timidly sung interludes between songs that show Vince at his most vulnerable we’ve ever seen, repeatedly telling himself how he wants to give up, or how “We all waste away.” We also see Vince reflect on his newfound fame and how it affects him as a person, a theme that is clear with the big-headed album cover and Prima Donna title. Vince continues to be an engaging lyricist, no matter what he’s rapping about.

 

Vince Staples has once again delivered another solid project. He continues to prove himself as a hip-hop heavyweight to be reckoned with in the present and is an example of why hip-hop is in a good place in 2016. Prima Donna does an excellent job of giving fans a preview of what is to come in the hopefully near future for Vince, as well as being a memorable project in its own right.