‘Vinyl Days’ is the seventh album from the 32-year-old rapper born Sir (yes, ‘Sir’) Robert Bryson Hall II, and his second release since ending his self-imposed retirement.
It finds the Maryland native in explosively creative spirits, delivering 30 tracks of boom bap beats and rapid rhymes in frenetic fashion. The LP operates like a 1990s mixtape, with collabs, guest vocals and ditties moving among the full tracks. There is very little dead air.
Standout moments include the one-minute-54-second bumper Tetris. The video features Logic getting off a plane, dancing in front of fancy cars and then vibing into Manhattan, where he plays chess with locals, jumps on sofas and lords it up in the CEO suite of a high rise.
The clip zaps you straight into the throwback hip hop values of the album's cover, landing us somewhere between the Beastie Boys, Dilated Peoples and something altogether more avant garde—perhaps the work of Antipop Consortium or Del the Funky Homosapien.
As a mixtape-album it really works rather well, bouncing you around in a way that is compelling, entertaining and highly creative, with chunky and memorable samples, conscious rapping and thoughtful production. There are also some excellent laid back cuts among the intensity—Therapy Music (feat. Russ) is one example and summer groove Breath Control (feat. Wiz Khalifa), is another.
The main criticism is the smorgasbord of sound that you get—tracks are mostly around 2:30 in length and that means that as soon as you start to get into it, it ends. This is in keeping with the cut and paste aesthetic of some of the best hip hop albums ever created, but it probably needs to be stitched together with more bangers. On ‘Vinyl Days’ it ends up feeling quite discombobulating.
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