Vince spits slick bar after slick bar on this record, and his verses feel effortless and smooth. The most exciting sound comes from Sekoff and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver fame on “Crabs in a Bucket,” where the two infuse the piece with vibes New Age-y enough to be fit for Bon Iver’s own experimental and electronic “22, A Million” album from last year. There’s booming bass, drums and even some techno-reminiscent beats, throughout the project. With help from the likes of Zack Sekoff and Ray Brady, the album remains sonically cohesive and dark. After each verse, which paints gritty images of “blood on the leaves” (S/O Kanye) and “ JFK’d,” there’s the chorus of “When the sun goes down … Rain come down.” Whether the rain signifies bullets and brutality, or a cleansing of the bloodshed, is up in the air. However, “Rain Come Down,” the album’s final song, is less clear.
There are hints of promise in the penultimate “BagBak,” which he opens with, “This is for my future baby mama/Hope your skin is black as midnight.” Maybe someday, when Vince finds the right person, his perception of love will be rosier. The future isn’t all bleak for Vince, though.
In the second verse of “745,” Vince is similarly unenthusiastic about love, saying, “I tread light each time we speak/Play too rough might break ya heart.” He’s depicting love as a fragile idea that can be lost at any moment, and in the final part of the verse, he takes the religious imagery up a notch, to state that love is holy, it’s “a God to me,” but it’s also “real hard for me.” He’s wondering, Is love attainable, or is it just this unreachable, idyllic concept for only God to know? On “Love Can Be …”, he says getting involved with women leads to “Alimony money for the nails and weave/Nail me to the cross like that boy JC.” Women may literally be the death of Vince, and Staple him to the cross.* The intersection of love and violenceįor the most part, Vince appears to reject romance and love on the album, by pairing lyrics about women with lines evoking violence and physical pain. I made this on MS Paint, if u couldn’t tell 2. I like that Vince is challenging the traditional interpretations of water - H2O has had it good for too long it’s about time someone took it down a peg, I say! On “Crabs in a Bucket,” Vince similarly raps, “Nails in the black man’s hands and feet/Put him on a cross so we put him on a chain.”Īlthough water might be associated with purity and hope (think The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” and Springsteen’s “The River”), for Vince, it also evokes danger and struggle. Mick Jenkins literally dedicates two records delving into the theme, and his song “Drowning” discusses white people’s oppression of African Americans through slavery. I find the exploration of water in hip-hop really interesting (Ugly God’s “Water” notwithstanding). The album also ends with “BagBak,” which references the dangers of deep-sea exploration, and “Rain Come Down,” which sets up a comparison between rain and bullets. Throughout the album, there are songs that touch on various shades of this theory and this imagery the first two tracks, “Crabs in a Bucket” and “Big Fish,” tackle “the black man” being brought down and “swimming upstream,” respectively. Likewise, people’s futures can be limited to what their environment allows. The big fish theory refers to the idea that a fish can only grow as big as the bowl it’s contained in.
So read on for my full thoughts on “Big Fish Theory,” my favorite and least favorite tracks and my final rating. And even if Vince doesn’t intend for the album to be Afrofuturistic or artsy-fartsy, I think it’s still conceptually interesting enough to examine. Regardless, fam, I will be writing a long-ass review, because that’s what I do. He might even side-eye me writing this review, as if to say, I had this interview in mind while listening to the Long Beach rapper’s second studio album. After all, he’s not the type of artist to embed hidden messages or intricate themes in his work. “Of course not,” Vince says, to raucous audience laughter.
“So it doesn’t mean anything?” Trevor asks. When asked about the role of Afrofuturism in the album, Vince, in his typical deadpan manner, replies, “I like saying stuff about black people to white people.”
Promoting his album, “Big Fish Theory,” which was released Friday, rapper Vince Staples appeared on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” to discuss the project’s themes.