We reviewed Riff Raff's new album for the lols

There some questions that philosophers have been trying to answer since the dawn of time. For Plato, “What is the meaning of life?”, for Kim Kardashian, “What dress should I wear today?”, and for me, “Why in God’s name is RiFF RaFF making music?”.

It’s the mind-boggling question that’s been popping up an awful lot since the announcement of the Houston rapper’s debut album, NEON iCON. Produced chiefly by king of electronic ignorance Diplo and showcasing an all-star cast of feature artists, it was no secret that this long-awaited debut was going to be almost as big as Kanye West’s ego.

There are three ways to listen to RiFF RaFF’s music. You can love it, you can hate it, or you can appreciate the absolute absurdity of what he’s saying and have an ironic chuckle to it. The problem with RiFF RaFF (another artist who apparently feels the need to capitalise random letters of his name as a compensation for their lack of creativity) is that his music (if you can call it that) is so bad that it’s impossible to even sarcastically. While you could facepalm and roll your eyes when 2 Chainz hollered ‘She got a big booty/ So I call her big booty’, it’s like someone’s driven nails through your ears when RiFF RaFF announces ‘You used to be so pretty/ I kiss you on the titty’.

RiFF RaFF has used his internet stardom to perfect many modern hip-hop traits such as “I can’t think of a way to end this sentence, so I’ll just obnoxiously repeat the last syllable of each line to sound like I’m badass” and “I need to make sure my fans know I’m rich, so I need to recite every obnoxiously high-quality fashion brand that my imbecilic, drugged-up brain can struggle to remember”. Throw this in with borderline racist, mindless rubbish such as ‘I’m in Chinatown… Bok Choi!’, and you have a contender for the worst rap album of the past few years. (Hear that? That’s the sound of Jay-Z breathing a sigh of relief.)

His rhyming and lyrical flow is so abysmal that it makes even failed actor Childish Gambino and wannabe-Eminem Mac Miller look like Tupac recreations when placed on the same track. The tattooed monstrosity even managed the impossible, corrupting the priceless vocals of Dirty Projectors’’ Amber Coffman on ‘Cool It Down’. Surprisingly, (or maybe unsurprisingly, all things considered) the best track (if there had to be one) is the album closer, where he doesn’t rap at all and therefore distances himself from the disgusting persona he has created.

NEON iCON runs for 47 minutes, and for these 47 minutes you’d probably wish you were listening to Nickelback’s ‘Photograph’ over and over again. RiFF RaFF’s self-obsession and stupidity is so vacuous that it’s not only 47 minutes that you’ll never get back from your life, it probably also robbed you of 47 IQ points. Shit, you could give a dyslexic four year old a pen and paper and they would come up with more sophisticated lyrics than some of the mindless dribble that ended up on here. Please, someone rescue that baby on the album cover from his grip before it becomes infected.

Not quite deserving a No Stars Ever, but still a 2/10.

#riffraff #review #rubenseaton