Iamsu! – Sincerely Yours

While the last few years have blurred the line between albums and mixtapes, rappers insist on stressing the personal importance of their debut album, that is, the first album after the deal comes. Music, plenty of it even, has been released, but this is where your career starts. For Iamsu! it has been an interesting ride. Repping the least celebrated (at least in a rap sense) major American region usually proves fruitless, but a string of beats and verses on some of the most fun regional/Internet hits of the past few years, including LoveRance's "Up," E-40's "Function" and of course, Sage the Gemini's "Gas Pedal," created a buzz unheard of for a Bay Area artist. There was never a single hit song attributed solely to him, but he clearly represented something significant for California rap.

2013 found Su being lapped by his contemporaries YG, Ty Dolla $ign, Problem and HBK member Sage The Gemini, each with multiple radio hits, each fitting into rap's current ratchet/strip club narrative. A growing number of blog posts aside, Iamsu, who had always seemed so poised to take over, had yet to make a dent into the national scene even as rap's go-to sound gravitated toward his home state. With Sincerely Yours Su was set to finally make his mark, to properly declare the start of an outstanding career.

Much of the music on Sincerely matches up with the rest of his catalogue, technically sound and enjoyable. His personality is present but the songs don't scream superstar. He does things you'd expect from his debut – mentioning putting on for the Bay and being the first to bypass that handicap – but this collection of songs feels more like an extension of his many mixtapes. If there's an aspect of the album that leans more towards the modern mainstream, it's the songs that resemble music by 2 Chainz, Wiz and Drake, filled with cliches that sound good but don't really mean anything. The lead single "Only That Real" might have made serious noise two years ago but is generally forgettable in the year of DJ Mustard.

Su's ability as a rapper has never been questioned. He's incredibly capable of putting words together in interesting ways, but he really shows off his ear for melody on many of these songs. He doesn't just sing through Auto-tune. His voice becomes an instrument in itself. Think R&B Future meets Kanye on "Say What's Real." On "Stop Signs" there's no hesitance to hit a higher register and demonstrate a bit of vibrato. Some of the most interesting moments, both from a production sense and a lyrical one, happen on the album's interludes. It's as if Iamsu is at his best when creating in a confined space whether for a 16 bar guest verse or a two minute interlude.

There's plenty to appreciate about Sincerely Yours, but the best debuts of the new millenium – The College Dropout, good kid, m.A.A.d. City, even My Krazy Life – had higher aspirations. Iamsu is from the Bay. He's used to being under appreciated. He just need to change things enough for the world to finally respond.

Film School: Neighbors

He's had some duds in the past few years, but Seth Rogen is officially a bankable comedy star. He's not putting up Ferrell and Sandler box office numbers, but he's gotten to the point where his production company releases a movie every summer. He's reliable enough for laughs that even with members of the Apatow family as co-stars in some of his most recent work, he's still the main attraction for most moviegoers. There is just too much wrong with Neighbors for Rogen to save the day this time around.

From the jump, I was confused with the Zac Efron casting. There's no obvious alternative, and that's probably how he got the job, but is he even famous really? The premise of the movie is not that a fraternity moves in next door. It's that the married couple played by Rogen and Rose Byrne don't want to come to terms with the boring lifestyle their newborn daughter has brought. They want to be cool again — if you didn't get this, they literally repeat it four times in the first half hour — and oh by the way, a fraternity moves in next door.

The movie is all jokes. This isn't a bad thing. Good comedies aren't necessarily heartwarming films. It's just that so many of them fall flat in the same way all the "by the hymen of Olivia Newton-John" type jokes did in Anchorman 2. Some of them probably could have been. Hannibal Buress and Jerrod Carmichael are very funny guys, and they weren't used properly. There's a scene where Efron and Dave Franco's characters go back and forth in this non-sense one-up battle. Franco pulls it off. Efron doesn't. If you're directing this (I assume) big budget comedy, shouldn't you realize this?

It's hard to tell when they gave up on the movie. Is it when they decided to throw 10 cameos in the first act? Or was it in the editing room because there are some weird cuts in this movie.

If there's a bright spot, it's that Rogen, the actor, isn't washed up. He's the movie's highlight. He's fat, loveable and knows how to deliver jokes. We saw that in Knocked Up, and we still saw that in This Is The End. Rogen, the idea man and producer and Hollywood big shot and hopeful starmaker, may need to step back and re-evaluate the results from his recent work.

Bay Area Singles Report (April 2014)

1-O.A.K. – "Slide Thru" (feat. P-Lo)
There's two things actively working against this song. 1-O.A.K. is a very difficult name to google. And there's already a song out called "Slide Thru." Disregard that for a second because I can't get enough of this song. I believe 1-O.A.K. taught at the community center that the HBK kids worked at and mentored a few of them specifically. He's been featured on their songs here and there, but this is his first foray into an actual solo career. This song is a hit if I ever heard one. I love how it goes from hook to rap verse to hook to sung verse and doesn't follow a typical song structure. And if we really let "Who Booty" be a thing two years ago, there's no reason this song can't work out.

Iamsu – "Show Me" (feat. 50 Cent & Jay Ant)
I talked about this here.

Young Bari – "Bigger Than Me"
After hearing his verses on the HBK Gang tape and E-40's album(s) last year, I was really excited to hear a proper full length from Young Bari. Bari's been loosely affiliated with the HBK guys, and it was his song that the Gang claims DJ Mustard borrowed from. His voice is super interesting, sort of like Katt Williams meets Young Thug, and, at least from the features I heard in 2013, the kid can flow. But his Mob Solo mixtape was just boring to me. It's a lot of stories about his life but not in any interesting sense. His hooks get repetitive, and he could have used some better beats.

D-Lo – "Ghetto" (feat. Magnolia Chop & Sleepy D)
D-Lo's Keep It On The D-Lo album flew right under the radar, but it really is excellent. It's unfortunate that KMEL doesn't play local music because, like I mentioned when the Mustard/HBK riff started to gather steam, this album is way more representative of the Bay Area sound I identify with (think Traxamillion and hyphy-era EA-Ski). Sage and 'em might have people convinced all there is to do here is party, but "Ghetto" brings back an aggression the East Bay has been missing. I could do without the off-key hook, but you don't really get more Bay Area than that.

G-Eazy – "Let's Get Lost"
I honestly haven't paid much attention to G-Eazy. One, because he's white, and two, because his name is G-Eazy. He's bubbled on the scene for a little while now and has been much more successful than his cohorts during the same time frame (because he's white). Up to this point, there hasn't been a song that identifies him as an artist, but he's clearly on his way to stardom. And in a post-Macklemore-texting-Kendrick world, it's sickening how aware of his situation he probably is. "Let's Get Lost" isn't even that bad of a song. It's actually kind of good. It's the type of song you can rock with publicly until you inevitably see a sorority girl singing along to it. The video is very well done too.

Adrian Marcel – "2am" (feat. Sage The Gemini)
This technically wasn't released in April, but it's actually sorta in rotation at KMEL. In terms of R&B joints by random California artists, "2am" is better than TeeFlii's "This D" but not quite Rayven Justice's "Slide Thru". That is my assessment of this song.

P-Lo – "Can't Tell Me Nothin" (feat. Kool John & Skipper)
This is a Mannie Fresh ripoff with some boring raps.

Mila – "Hell Yeah" (feat. Clyde Carson)
I'm happy Sage basically brought real club songs back, ones meant for dancing and not aggressively jumping up and down. I live in the South Bay though, and the music that gets played here is so perplexingly random it makes my brain want to explode. Hopefully some club in Oakland will play this regularly. The NSFW video is a nice touch.

Derek King – "What It Do" (feat. IAmSu!)
Where did all these R&B guys come from? And why do they all have names that are so difficult to remember? Iamsu is very good at rapping. He also tends to say nice things about women in rapping form, and it's not even corny. I already forgot whoever sings this song's name.