Luigi The First, or just Luigi as I like to call him, is an aspiring South African hip hop artist on SoundCloud. He is virtually unknown as the title suggests. Being the kinda/music fanatic creep I am, I found his music by chance. Over That was the first track I heard from him, unfortunately the song is no longer available to listen to which is why I thought I should write this post.
After months of absence, why the fuck do I care about this or what some obscure kid who might never read this is doing? Honestly, I don’t know, but look, I am back and if you have been following my blog this should make you happy (p.s I miss you too). Plus, I hate seeing great talent being squandered and I need to vent.
The Skill and the Talent
Luigi The First is talented, there is no doubt about it. Skill and well of potential waiting to be harnessed, explored and exploited to the benefit of the artist. He shows decent speed, range, elegant flow, virtuosity and complex word play. At his best he concocts a beautiful mixture of these qualities, painting a swaying, poignant piece of rap – it is difficult not to be captured by his performance. F.O.H(as of today, August 25, this track is also removed) is the last remaining example of what he is capable off. Go listen to it and tell me if I am wrong, there is potential there.
Here is his SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-831020223/tracks
The Tragedy
So what is the matter? Unfortunately, despite some brief moments of respectable quality Luigi has kept churning subpar, low-quality material. F.O.H( although this track needs to be longer than two minutes, it is less impressive and the recording is poor) and Over That, especially Over That, are something close to the golden standard everything else is half-assed, lazy, trite, unimaginative or wasted.
The best description of all of it is that it sounds like a home studio, by studio I mean your bedroom in your parents’ house, EP recorded by a deluded hormone-ravaged high school sophomore twerp. The lyrics aren’t worked at hard enough, it’s as if Luigi goes with the second thing that sounds good or fits, but never spends more than an hour writing or rewrites his lyrics. So you end up with predictable rhymes, clichés and tired rap tropes. The delivery too, quickly becomes formulaic. The beats, don’t show the kinds of changes, creativity and variance that make a track like Over That a classic. His hooks are just – sigh – underwhelming. What makes it worse he keeps featuring artists like Prezi P, who do nothing but dilute the strength of his songs(Played is a good example of this). A bunch of these tracks have cringeworthy self-adulating moments where it is clearly unearned and undemonstrated which just makes him sound delusional.
What Can Be Done
If Luigi is “making waves”, it is certainly is some small sycophant inhabited universe that no one else outside his small little corner is aware off. If he wants the rest of the world to take him seriously, and his art to grow (which is what I want) he should surround himself with people who are not satisfied with bedroom studio quality tracks, people who are actually critical of his work. More layered beats that progress, change and grow instead of sounding like a beat on a loop, this will allow him to showcase his skill and grow. And he should take longer than a day(I don’t know if takes this long but it sounds like it) to make a track, good quality songs that have massive playability take time craft. If it sounds good today, give it a week and listen to it again, I bet it won’t sound awesome then. Better yet, have someone who doesn’t stand to gain anything from praising you listen to it and give you cold honest feedback(a service I am providing for free, in the small chance you read this). Your flow could be better timed and executed, practice and keep drilling. If this makes you unsure of yourself, good! It will make you work harder.
One last thing, you need to record at an actual studio.
Sandy Author 