GOOD Music’s Cruel Summer is, for lack of a better word, an advertisement for West Island’s Def Jam imprint, Getting Out Our
Dreams. While it’s presented as a Kanye West album, fans expecting the next College Dropout or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy are in for a rude awakening. That isn’t to say that it’s not a fantastic album, but it is clear that there was more than one cook in the kitchen this time around.

The album opens gently with the string introduction of “To the World”, but it doesn’t stay soft for long. R. Kelly is barely given the chance to croon out the chorus before the machine gun-like beat drops and the album heads down the path of heavy, lumbering backbeats and slow, sweet rhymes that pour out of your speakers like maple syrup.

Although West is technically the leader of Cruel Summer, Big Sean is without a doubt the album’s MVP. With simple yet colorful lyrics about his favorite topics, how much women like Big Sean and how cool Big Sean is, he breaks no new ground but still lays a solid rhythmical framework for the other artists to expand on. Considering that Big Sean is featured in the album’s best songs, it is clear that he is also the unsung hero of Cruel Summer.

While producers are generally left out of the limelight, Hit-Boy also deserves recognition for his contributions to Cruel Summer. Hit-Boy is responsible for the booming background to West and Jay-Z’s hit single “N***as in Paris”, and he held himself to that same standard of excellence with his latest work.

Hit-Boy produced three of the songs on the album, most notably the first single, “Mercy”. It leads off by sampling a highly distorted reggae vocalist wailing about “a gnashing of the teeth” and quickly becomes a powerful beast of a beat complete with a floor-shaking vocal line and a squealing synth lead. While there are many producers on this album, including West himself, Hit-Boy is the one most worthy of acclaim.

The four singles, “Mercy”, “Clique”, “Cold” and “New God Flow” are absolutely the strongest tracks of this collection. While this is
generally the point, as singles are released to build anticipation leading up to the release of an album, it is disappointing in and of
itself. While not every song can be as good as “Mercy”, it’s not a great feeling to listen to a record and realize that you heard the
best song it had to offer back in April.

To be fair, “Mercy”s infectious downtuned chorus, “Clique”s lazy, rolling beat, and the jaw-droppingly angry breakdown during West’s verse on “New God Flow” are hard to top, but they make the rest of the album feel lacking. These disappointments include the bottom third of the album, the fourth track that West was not a part of. Kid Cudi’s “Creepers” strays too far into the realm of radio rock to be enjoyable. Pair this with his less-than-witty rhymes, and you get some of the longest three minutes and 14 seconds you’ve ever experienced.

The next track, “Bliss”, suffers from a case of corniness despite its impressive pedigree. John Legend and Teyana Taylor’s vocals on top of Hudson Mohawke’s production work should mean an impressive rhythm and blues song, rather than a track with forced positivity and bald eagles screeching over the chorus. The song can’t stand up to Taylor’s contributions on West’s most recent solo work, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and anyone who has heard Mohawke’s production in TNGHT will surely be expecting a far more impressive song. We may never know if West’s magic touch could have saved the songs he decided
to not be involved in.

Overall, Cruel Summer is a solid effort. While the singles outshine the rest of the album and there are a few tracks that West should have tweaked before pressing the album, it features a fair amount of solid songs and an awesome performance by the up-and-coming Big Sean.