G-Eazy – These Things Happen

Rappers have had the strange habit especially over the last five years or so to, after years of releasing music and cultivating a fan base, make unbelievably generic debut albums. You establish a reason for people to enjoy your material then release a project that's part J. Cole, part Drake and part Rick Ross. At this point, there really isn't much to G-Eazy. He rhymes words so by definition is a rapper, and this has gotten him by since 2009, earning him a loyal fan base that even established major label artists would yearn for. But These Things Happen doesn't reveal much to those wondering who G-Eazy is.

G-Eazy is a white 25-year-old from Oakland, but this album could have very well been by a Big Sean. You have your origin story – okay, that's fine. Then there's the "is this what fame is really like?" song. Sprinkle in some vague painful relationship stories about some girl that don't really describe anything specific. Add a Drake-y I-forgot-to-call-my-mom song. And if that's not enough, here's an A$AP Ferg feature.

In a sense, he pulls off the generic thing pretty well. There's no clear hit single (how "I Mean It" was sent to radio, I'll never guess), but people will obviously eat up "Downtown Love" and "Let's Get Lost" if they get a chance to, and with those, he experiments with some real genre-bending musicality. It's as if he tried to recreate Thank Me Later track for track.

Now let's get to it. G-Eazy is white, and he is good looking. So much good in his life has probably happened because he is white and he's good looking. His rap career is where it's at right now because he's white and good looking. Non-rap fans feel comfortable giving his music a chance because he's white and good looking. He's from Oakland, and he's had maybe not the most ideal upbringing, so sure, that earns him credibility or whatever, but ultimately he is in the conversation because he is white and he's good looking. So the fact that he's gotten more media attention and as a result, membership in that cultural conversation, for putting together this mediocre ass album than IamSu and Sage the Gemini have gotten combined in the last two years might be the saddest thing to happen to Bay Area rap in quite some time.