summrs

Summrs is a 24-year-old MC who hails from Lafayette, Louisiana. As a member of the SoundCloud era, Summrs has been steadily releasing music since 2016, with a prolific output that has sometimes resulted in the rapper dropping multiple projects per month. His latest effort, B4DaRaven, serves as a prequel mixtape for his upcoming album Tale Of Da Raven. Summrs will release Tale Of Da Raven sometime in May. The project, which was released on April 12, runs seven tracks over the course of 18 minutes. Let’s dive into the brief tracklist of B4DaRaven and examine the material therein.

The Project Starts Strong

B4DaRaven has a strong opener with “Curbside at The Ritz,” a trap banger with pulsing 808 patterns and stabby string instruments. On the song, Summers spits a few bars, updating the public on his recent misadventures, including beating cases, cutting off fake friends, and partying with fast women. The song is a pretty standard trap outing, all things considered, but it sets the tone for B4DaRaven well enough and serves as a highlight overall.

“Made Man” continues the hot streak as the young rapper describes themes of crime and extravagance in his rhymes. On this track, Summrs’s voice is characteristically drowning in autotune, though the mixing of the track lends itself to the robotic vocal effects, making it aesthetically pleasing. The upbeat cowbell-heavy drums provide a light and airy sense of weightlessness to the track, making Summrs’s confessions sound chill and laid-back.

“B4DaRaven” Hits A Lul Fast

“Situationships” is kind of a painful listen. Summrs gives his take on a number of women, referenced by first name, and why he couldn’t make a full-time relationship work with them. This song sounds like a cheap imitation of tracks like “Mambo No. 5” or Anderson Paak’s 2018 track “Sweet Chick.” Unfortunately, this song is the first major dud on the album, but not the last.

The two-hander “Sneaky Link/Love that 4 us” is clearly designed to be a focal point of B4DaRaven, with a wailing guitar solo that separates the first leg of the track from the second in an obvious attempt at replicating the success of Kanye West’s “Devil In A New Dress.” Unfortunately, the vocal performance on this one is repetitive and redundant, and mixed like you’re hearing it through a Bluetooth speaker in a plastic bag from the inside of a high school’s stairwell. Additionally, Summrs bites Lil Uzi’s vocal style so hard on this song that Uzi could probably legally demand royalties.

The Back Half Of The Tape Loses It’s Momentum

After the one-two punch of “Situationships” and “Sneaky Link/Love that 4 us,” Summrs never truly regains his footing on the project. “Drank n Sex” is as predictable as the title would suggest while offering drowned-out autotune mixing that pales in comparison to earlier songs such as “Made Man.” “In our favor” is a rare gem that offers Summr’s insight into poverty, struggle, and the American dream. Still, the track is criminally short, and offers very little time to marinate on the ideas presented in the lyrics. The final track on the tape, “Brioni shawl collar/Catfish,” sees Summrs rapping about fashion and luxury brands in a two-hander that is much better than “Sneaky Link/Love that 4 us,” but is still too little too late to save the project at this point.

B4DaRaven certainly won’t be nominated for any Grammy Awards and likely won’t appear on many “best of 2024” lists. Still, at the end of the day, this project exists mostly to build hype for Summrs’s upcoming album. While the showings on B4DaRaven offer very little on their own, they serve as passable scraps pulled from the cutting room floor to promote the rapper’s new material.

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