Boy Meets World, the debut album from rapper Fashawn, is a raw and honest coming of age story set in inner city Fresno, California. Along with producer Exile, who produced the entire album, Fashawn has released what is easily one of the best Hip-Hop records of the year. The album is at times deeply personal, and spans the emotional spectrum from heavy and depressing to whimsical and joyful. Boy Meets World also marks another stellar release from Exile, who is steadily establishing himself as one of the best producers in Hip-Hop. Fashawn, who has risen in large part due to the support of Hip-Hop blogs like nahright.com, okayplayer.com and 2dopeboyz.com, released the album on his 21st birthday. His great strength lies in that his music is equally as appealing to Hip-Hop formalists as it is to the younger generation of Hip-Hop fans that have made the Internet such an important medium. In a Hip-Hop landscape that is much influx, Fashawn and Exile are making waves not by reinventing the wheel but rather by taking what has always been great about Hip-Hop and making it their own.
Nothing on the album, even the end of the final track, “Boy Meets World,” where Fashawn sings, feels forced. A lot of what makes this album so appealing is how honestly Fashawn speaks about real life. On “Life As A Shorty” talks about growing up fatherless with the frank innocence of a child, “I didn’t know I had a dad until he showed up.” In the album’s penultimate track, “When She Calls,” he tackles depression and the bleak outlook of inner city youth, “When She called I had a knife to my wrist/feeling like life ain’t make no sense/ just quit my job/ sick of flippin burgers livin’ in my aunt’s garage.”
Boy Meets World benefits from some very strong features. Pulling heavily from prior Exile collaborators like Blu and Aloe Blacc, and southern California rappers like Co$$ and Evidence, the guests never upstage Fashawn, but contribute essential pieces to several tracks. The strongest features come from Blu, no stranger to Exile beats, his landmark 2007 record Below The Heavens was produced entirely by him, and Evidence, from the rap group Dialated Peoples, who has played the role of mentor to young Fashawn. Exile ads vocals to the playful “Bo Jackson,” where he proves himself a formidable lyricist in a back and forth volley of braggadocio rhymes with Fahsawn.
Exile has mastered the art of chopping and distilling the essential pieces of a sample and orchestrating them into something fresh and musical. Many of the tracks are bouncy and soulful, while others like “Father,” my favorite song on the record, are lush and dripping with melody and orchestration. Exile’s drums are never overbearing, and tend more toward the minimal side of things. Their swagger is influenced by J Dilla’s influential off beat bounce, but Exile has personalized it and created a rhythmic feel all his own.
Boy Meets World bangs hard from front to back, and holds your attention all the way through. In fact, the record gets better and better as it goes on, and rarely covers the same ground. Each song captures a different vibe, and gives the listener a different feeling. There are a few things I don’t love about this record, like the clichéd Jazz piano linking the two sections of the title track as well as a clunker or two from Fashawn’s pen, like on the singing section of “Boy Meets World” where Fashawn sings, “They got us over seas/ Killin’ people that bleed.” But ultimately none of this really taints the album, I like to see artists take risks even if they don’t work 100% of the time.
As someone who was too young to be anything but peripherally aware of Hip-Hop during its Golden Era in the early and mid-nineties, this is one of the first albums I feel can stand with the classics but is truly of my generation. It is too soon to know how this album will be received, but Boy Meets World may be one of the first classic albums of the internet era.
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