31 January 2013

MIXTAPE REVIEW: CyHi The Prynce Ivy League: Kick Back


Well I know he is not really royalty but the Prynce has made his return. CyHi The Prynce has released his awaited Ivy League: Kick Back. This is the sequel to the first Ivy League in which I have not heard so I can’t compare them. I’ve heard a few CyHi tracks before and one mixtape which was “Royal Flush 2,” and I loved it. While I may not know the full capability of the Prynce but I do know he has lyrical abilities.

After the intro and interlude of a college student asking CyHi where to find some weed while they are on campus, the first track is “Mary Jane” featuring Smoke Dza. The song is sampled from Rick James’ funk original “Mary Jane.” The song is not a hard song to decipher the title alone should let you know what this is about. CyHi speaks on his longtime relationship with Mary Jane and how selling weed contributed to a lot of his tokens that he possesses(ed).  Smoke Dza’s verse is not of my favorite lyrics from him but he does have a few lines that were nice.

“Far removed” is a Lex Luger produced track and is one of the stronger tracks on the mixtape. This track is a banger and some nice lyrics. The audio places you in a mindset in a gangster movie in which shit is about to go down, it is very dark. The visuals are also a nice story to the song. CyHi is letting rap niggas in the industry he still about that life. He is not far removed from that thug life and he keeps the tooly with him. Bottom line, rap is an option. This song is very hot and I love his flow on it.  

The next track is “Start a War.” This may very well be one of my favorite tracks along with “Young rich fly famous” featuring Childish Gambino. In the first verse CyHi goes into his past about his boy that was just like him and how close they were, but his boy chose the street life which resulted in his demise.  CyHi admits to never seeing his demons and thinking about it while he is playing dead until the killers drove away. The second verse is going into his reaction of his boy’s death and knowing who killed him. The man who killed him was the brother of this chick that his partner used to talk to. “Word on the street he knew this bird named Patrice/ he sold her brother a couple pounds of herb and a key. I know where he stay, where he serve, where he be/ swerve hit the curb in a blur he asleep *gunshots.*” The third verse he is wondering whether he should ride with his boys to get revenge on his boy’s killer. He compares himself to feeling like Trey in “Boyz N the Hood” when he was in Doughboy’s impala to get revenge for Ferris killing Ricky. CyHi makes the same choice as Trey and gets out of the car to try and prevent a war, in which the song is titled.

There are a lot of features on this mixtape to make it a nice listen. There is a track with Big K.R.I.T. and Yelawolf titled “We drink We smoke.” If you know of K.R.I.T. you know he does not disappoint and his flow on this track is beautiful. We here at BITM support artists like Big K.R.I.T. for President. That was a very nice feature. Other features on this mixtape include 2 Chainz, B.o.B., Travis Porter, Canji Taylor, and Trae the Truth. Overall, the mixtape is an okay piece of work; there were valleys and peaks to this project. I think that CyHi is capable of putting out better work and I was not impressed by this mixtape. I’m giving it three tapes.






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