Skinny Jeanz and a Mic

the take

*sighs* Lowkey, I knew I’d eventually hit an age where this would start being harder to listen to. This is one of those cringe-but-I-lived-through-it albums—I even had the chance to buy a bootleg copy in Los Angeles just a few months after it dropped. 😭 New Boyz’s "Skinny Jeanz and a Mic" sounds exactly like 2009 in every way, and there’s still a bit of nostalgia attached for me. I never thought Ben J and Legacy were the next anything, but teenage me around 2009/2010 definitely vibed with the punchline-heavy style since it was fresh at the time. Revisiting it now though… yeah, the bars are way more cringe than I remembered. The moment I heard "Why don’t you do you and go hump a clone? (Get it?)" on "Cricketz," I already knew I was in for a rough listen. The production is also more stripped down and dated than I gave it credit for, with a lot of it sounding empty in hindsight. Overall, it’s pretty mixed—"Bunz" and "Way 2 Many Chickz" still sit at the bottom for me, while "Turnt" and "You’re a Jerk" remain the clear standouts. The rest is mostly average but listenable. "Skinny Jeanz and a Mic" ends up being more of a time capsule than anything else, capturing a very specific moment in music culture, flaws and all. New Boyz came in with material that hasn’t aged all that gracefully, but I still can’t fully hate it. Even now, I still find myself moving when "Dot Com" or something like that comes on. It’s messy, dated, and far from great—but it’s also part of my music DNA.