Rating 7.5/10
With his first major label release, The Stoned Immaculate, Curren$y has delivered a well-rounded album that rarely breaks the formula the New Orleans spitter has mastered over his many past projects.
Kicking off with the Wale-featured and Bink!-produced “What It Look Like,” the album’s first single grabs your attention immediately with its harp, strings and piano keys soulfully providing a welcome backdrop for Curren$y and his MMG guest star to do their respective things. “We smoke loud, might have to get your ears checked out, after your hoes leave the Jets hang out,” raps Spitta on the track.
Following The Stoned Immaculate‘s first collaboration are two solid tracks, “Privacy Glass”, and the Monsta Beatz-produced “Armoire” which features fellow Jet Life Recordings members, Young Roddy and Trademark, both holding their own against their “boss”; however, after the first few records, The Stoned Immaculate really kicks into high gear.
Some of the album’s strongest tracks rest within its mid-section with records like the Marsha Ambrosius-assisted “Take You There,” “Showroom” and “Capitol,” which features 2 Chainz, all portraying different sides of Spitta, yet containing the cool, calm and collected rhymes that his fans have come to love him for. “Smoking something as strong as my vivid imagination, I don’t see nothing wrong with love being naked, out this world whips my car a space station, my life is a trip my crib a vacation,” he raps on “Take You There.”
“No Squares,” features a score sample from the Playstation game God Of War, finds Curren$y reuniting with his How Fly partner Wiz Khalifa on one of two collaborations between the two MC’s on The Stoned Immaculate, and is one of the album’s strongest cuts, with both rappers preaching about their success and all the ways they get them: “no square shall enter into the circle of winners.”
The Neptunes-produced “Chasin Paper,” which also features Pharrell, is another standout followed by two of the best songs on The Stoned Immaculate which are also the album’s closing tracks, “Fast Cars” with Daz Dillinger and “Jet Life” with Big K.R.I.T. and Wiz Khalifa.
The production on The Stoned Immaculate is also top-notch despite frequent collaborator Ski Beatz being absent from the project. Ski, who has helped mold and develop the sound that Curren$y has become known for on his past projects, with all of their morphing samples and instrumentation, is “replaced” by such talent as J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Big K.R.I.T., The Futuristiks and a gang of others that help the MC pick up, soundwise, where Ski left off.
Overall, The Stoned Immaculate delivers, and for those that thought Curren$y might lose some of that independent “swag” by signing with Warner Bros., you can breathe a collective sigh of relief. If anything, the major label home, backing, and support may have just provided fans with a more refined-sounding album than they’ve heard from him in the past, and it surely will not disappoint his legion of old fans – or the ones who may be discovering Spitta for the first time with this album.
Curren$y’s The Stoned Immaculate Is Available Now