Clever's 'Crazy' - 'Clever?'

 

Clever's sophomore album, 'Crazy', is a near dreary piece. The vocal deliveries are passable yet irritate at times when Clever is almost derivative to Post Malone. The production decisions seemed lazy as the trap beats annoyingly lacked a pulse. Fortunately, a few instances of solid acoustics and guitar riffs made 'Crazy' a tad more bearable instrumentally.

From July to Everything Beautiful, it was a near forgettable interval. Whether a song is a love ballad, like 'Everything Beautiful', or braggy, like 'Call Me Nobody', which features Lil-Wayne on autopilot, all of them consisted of trap instrumentals that were shockingly one-dimensional, almost snooze-inducing. At least, Clever's croons in this part of the album were at most satisfactory. Also,  'Use Again' had a nice guitar riff in its conclusion.

'Crazy' reaches a slightly more energetic point in 'Way Out.' The riff that begins the track is somewhat pulsating. However, it fades into the background as flavourless bombastic bass take over the instrumental. Fortunately, Clever's vocal delivery is catchy here.

In 'Rolls Royce Umbrella', Clever begins this rather unlikeable trend where he is almost derivative of Post Malone. It does not help that a featuring Chris Brown feels so out of place sonically while the instrumentals recall dull trap beats. Acoustic strings and guitar make a pleasing appearance in 'Life's A Mess II'. However, the vocal delivery between Post Malone and Clever was almost similar in that there was difficulty in differentiating their respective verses. It should not take browsing the lyrics on Genius.com to find out which verse was sung by Clever or Post. Following '99', the twenty-second piece of silence, and a passionate spoken word tribute to Juice Wrld in 'Dreams,' Clever continues to distractingly be derivative of Post Malone in 'It's All Bad' and 'Skittles' over the same, uninteresting trap beats.

'Crazy' concludes oddly with 'Alive.' It consists of a nine hundred and ninety-nine-second silence as a tribute to Juice WRLD. While it is sweet to tribute Juice WRLD, having a nine hundred and ninety-nine-second silence feels excessive. Both '99' and 'Dreams' would have sufficed. When the nine hundred and ninety-nine-second silence ends in this twenty-four-minute conclusion, Clever provides his best vocal performance. His croons are soothing, especially over a near cinematic instrumental of minimalistic piano keys and chilling synths.

While serviceable vocally throughout, Clever's 'Crazy' is a rather tedious album due to uninspiring trap beats and painful moments of being derivative to Post Malone. Hopefully, in the future, Clever does improve his production decisions. The acoustic moments, while very few, had a glimmer of hope.  

3.5/10 

Favourite Tracks: Way Out.