Kyle Completely Phones it In On 'See You When I Am Famous!'

Why did this have to be bad? I mean seriously this is actually one of the more disappointing things I’ve heard all year. I’ve always been a massive Kyle fan, making up part of probably 10% of his listeners that play his non-iSpy songs more than iSpy. His last album felt like an amazing display of the potential he has as an artist and I came out of it not only with a couple of timeless bangers, but also hope that Kyle would put out something truly amazing in the future. Songs of his like The Force, Zoom and especially Ups & Downs make for some that I’ve consistently had on repeat since I first heard them. Between the extremely interesting and miraculously decent ideas like combining some Anime-esque vocals with a 2 Chainz feature (on Ikuyo) and the more atmospheric and emotional tracks, Kyle earned a fan in me with that record. This time around though, I seriously have no idea what happened. All the passion, effort and knack for solid Pop songwriting has been completely thrown out the window with this one. This feels like the absolute laziest possible follow up to a record that should have only been the beginning for Kyle, and now it just seems like he’s confirming the dissenting voices of all those who have been saying he’s fallen off hard since iSpy.

There isn’t a single song on here that elicits the same emotional response in me as Ups & Downs did, or even as much as Kyle’s fantastic feature on the new Kota the Friend record from this year. That verse had me so excited to hear Kyle opening up and getting on his J. Cole vibes on this new project, but there isn’t a single verse on this entire album that actually brings out that same level of emotion whatsoever. I feel like Kyle has the talent to write this entire album in a week, if not less. Never once do his lyrics leave any sort of impression on me whatsoever, never once do any of the instrumentals carry the songs well enough to make them worth coming back to, and very rarely does it sound like anybody involved cared at all. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Kyle is biting other artist’s sound here, but very little of this album actually utilizes the sound Kyle is known for in the slightest. The run from Over It to Bye finds him wearing his Drake inspirations on his sleeve, there’s a couple of songs that are obvious cash grab club bangers for the girls, and the only upbeat Pop tunes on the record are underwhelming. Nothing on here brings that old level of unshakeable positivity, there isn’t any of that awesome playful/intense combination within the production, and Kyle doesn’t even sound like he’s into it. That’s something I’ve never been able to say about any Kyle song I’ve ever heard, as even on his worst songs he at least sounds like he believes in himself. This time though, it seems like he’s done believing in himself and instead has moved onto the point of being famous and not caring about any of that corny relatability anymore.

It’s not like there aren’t any moments here where Kyle attempts to bring what his fans expect, as there are songs where it seems like he’s genuinely trying to be emotive and down to earth. The collaboration with his old friend Mr. Man was awesome, and actually made for the only song I want to listen to again on the entire album, and Bye is a song with some shreds of emotion buried beneath an underwritten track that just makes it feel unbelievably lazy. Other than these super rare occasions where Kyle actually sounds like he cares in the slightest, every other song on here is so incredibly basic to the point where it’s the only thing I can even think of while listening. Trippie Redd outsung Kyle to the point where it was embarrassing, Rico Nasty and even Tyga of all people arguably outrapped him, and even on the solo tracks I felt like his vocal contributions were so trivial and forgettable. It makes me incredibly sad to be writing this about an artist I formerly thought had so much contagious passion and heart, but it’s very clear that Kyle had very little intentions of putting enough time into this thing to make it memorable. I mean seriously, I am completely incapable of singing whatsoever and I feel like I could’ve written a better Kyle album than this. Anybody with basic understanding of music production and what it is that makes Kyle’s better music so great could’ve put together a better project than this thing.

I want to remind everybody that I wanted to like this. I wanted to like this so bad. I was texting my buddies that are also Kyle fans asking their opinions before I listened and I even tried to pretend like I was into it for the first few listens. I’ve been singing Kyle’s praises for quite awhile, even trying to get a friend of mine that actively hates his voice into his music. I’ve probably listened to 2 or 3 of his songs 50+ times each, and I know all the words to more songs of his than just iSpy. That being said, this really is just awful. It’s an album by an artist I love with only one song that I ever want to hear again, and there are few things that are more painful than that in the music world. It’s not even like this was a failure because of risky production choices or songwriting directions that just didn’t pay off, it’s not because of that at all. This cash grab didn’t even have the dignity of being a failure with good intentions. This is just the most bland and understated thing that could have possibly come out without just being labeled some sort of pathetic parody. This album isn’t just bad because Kyle tried and failed, it’s bad because he didn’t even try in the first place. Kyle, an artist I truly love, is the worst part about this album. Mr. Man & K.i.D. is proof of this. His performance on that track is genuinely electrifying, and it’s proof that Kyle had all of the capabilities necessary to put out a fire album. However, he didn’t, because he never even wanted to. There’s a line somewhere on this record where Kyle says “these n***** make me wanna rap again”. As if it weren’t obvious enough, this line just confirms my suspicion that Kyle didn’t want to rap in the first place. He probably just thought two years was long enough to keep fans waiting and threw together some garbage project, pretending like he’d had it cooking for the last couple years.

Bland instrumentals, extremely awkward pacing and performances from Kyle that make for less memorable and notable moments than anybody else on his own album wind up making this just absolutely awful. As if that wasn’t enough, the title track is one of the laziest, most underproduced and just all around sad tracks I’ve ever heard from a mainstream rapper. I would assume that it’s just some song Kyle made when he was in highschool, but you’d think he’d at least re-record it and make it sound even slightly usable. Instead, that garbage song is a great example of everything wrong with this project. It’s lazy, rough around the edges, and thrown together so mindlessly that it seems like there was no time at all put into it. I’m still holding out hope that Kyle’s got some fantastic material left in him, but in comparison to his usual musical standards his newest album is absolute garbage. I’m a massive fan of the dude, especially some of the very promising material we got from his last album, but it’s clear See You When I Am Famous! was nothing but an afterthought to Kyle. This sounds like an awful posthumous Kyle album that was thrown together by some underpaid producers, the kind of posthumous album that wound up having everybody online saying that his legacy was done dirty. The only difference is that Kyle is very much still alive, not that you’d be able to tell that based on some of these songs. - 2.2/10 (Best Song - Mr. Man & K.i.D)