Rockie Fresh – Driving 88

At first, I thought Driving 88 was a really badass title referring to high-speed GTA-style car chases with the police. Then the intro track started playing and I realized that the title was a reference to Back To The Future, with 88 miles per hour being the speed at which Doc’s time machine needed to reach in order to transport Marty McFly through time. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except that Wale released a mixtape called Back To The Feature a few years ago, and frankly, hip-hop doesn’t need any more work based off the film for a while. In fact, it’s really a metaphor for the whole tape; nothing bad or dislikable, but nothing fresh or original either. Rockie Fresh Driving 88

“Impossible is nothin’/I mean lookin’ at the dough we gettin’/I mean look at the ho’s we fuckin’” go Rockie’s first lines of the tape on “Into The Future.” In fairness, he has some much better lines throughout the tape, but I single those out to underline my point that abandoning the formula is nowhere near the top of Rockie’s to-do list. Another example is the chorus to “Twenties,” which features Mr. Fresh rhyming “twenties” with “twenties” over and over. It’s great that he knows how to exploit the multiple connotations of the word, but isn’t that what Young Jeezy and Gucci Mane built their careers off?

The production of the tape is both its strongest suit and perhaps the facet of which it’s most obvious where Rock drew his inspiration. Wiz Khalifa could literally overdub his vocals onto any of these 16 tracks and stoners around the country would rejoice. There are a whole lot of spacious synth chords intermingling with 70’s soul samples, and you can just about picture the smoke-filled studio when the opening chords of “How We Do” come through the speaker. Again, it’s not unpleasant to hear, it’s just far from original.

As for the features, at least Rockie doesn’t jack that part of Wale’s tapes as well. There’s only four, and none of them pack anywhere near enough star power to steal the spotlight from the Michael J. Fox of the proceedings (Casey Veggies, Rebecca Jordan, King Louie and Phil Ade).

All in all, Driving 88 is an uninspiring but promising release from the 20-year-old Chicago MC. Those looking for something new to hold them over during early February (AKA the worst time of the year to find new music) should find something of value in the tape as long as their expectations are reasonable. Though seeing as A$AP Rocky kind of just invalidated his stage-name, it’s possible that Mr. Fresh has already missed his window of opportunity.

barstar3 Rockie Fresh Driving 88
3 / 5 bars