GANGIN II

the take

It's my fault for wanting to go back to this album after not even being an afterthought. In my own delusional way, I've always thought that this was good, or at least decent. But damn, I didn't expect this to be more average than I thought. "GANGIN II" is SOB X RBE's first album since their placement on the Black Panther soundtrack with their song "Paramedic!". (Still a banging song, by the way.) You would think they would've evolved even slightly with a project so soon after blowing up in the mainstream, right? Well... musically, they regressed. I'm not even surprised that the group members did literally nothing to improve their flows, raps, and even punchlines whatsoever, which might be asking for a bit too much. My attention then shifted to the beats, which has been the group's key to tolerable tracks. I'll give them props for trying to switch up their sound musically a bit with this one (though I liked the consistency of the first "GANGIN" project), but as a whole, what happens is there's a few more misses than hits to where on said misses, SOB X RBE feels a bit out of place on their own song because of their beat selection. "Peek A Boo", "Water Fountain", and "Times Get Hard", two of those having feature verses by two artists I don't really care for, happen to be the worst material SOB X RBE has released at that point, and ends up nearly killing the vibe for me. Aside from "Made It" and "Leave the Streets Alone" (the latter being my favorite on this), SOB X RBE tried to think outside the box while simultaneously attempting to still stay in their lane that got them to where they were by this point. The end result of "GANGIN II" is a mixed bag, unfortunately.