Sadly, Yellow Album is mostly a disappointment aside from one classic song

[Detox Is A Myth!!!]

Yellow Album just dropped, and I just listened the whole way through.  And, well, I guess it was bound to happen, because nobody's perfect, but Dom dropped the ball on this one, imo.  Most of the album is not specifically Westcoast like his older albums but has a broader sound to it -- well, at least the first half -- it sounds as if he's trying to stretch his sound a bit, but surprisingly the album comes off as hella sloppy in spots, and his subject matter is not all that expansive.  Dom repeats a lot of lines/bars during the choruses (e.g. that one about the pretty girl with the long hair kept repeating seemingly forever; there's this bit on PG Click where it samples Biggie so much, it might as well be a Big Poppa remix; there's some 7 min tracks with a couple of songs on them for some unknown reason   PG Click even has a huge gap in the middle.  Can you tell I don't like that song?  lol)  But then you have a song like Been Thuggin which is only a couple minutes long.  It's just a really jarring album experience, structurally.

Meanwhile, Gold Alpinas would be a good song, but the flow is so staccato and Dom's voice has that distanced, reverb vocal effect to it that it keeps me from just vibing to the rhythm of the track.  Usually one of Dom's strengths is to find the groove of a track and flow to it, but surprisingly he comes up short in that department a lot of times on here.  I'll give him credit for trying out a new drawl-like flow on Girls on Stage, though.

I'll probably accumulate more thoughts over the next few days as I listen more, but for now, here's the songs I like:

• Been Thuggin
• Lately
• Hangin
• 5.0 Conversations -- The first part has a late night, muted vibe to it, and I LOVE the second half of this two-song track, it's really dope!
• Peace and Happiness - a nice song on par with Dom's other album closers with a serene, reflective atmosphere and subject matter
• PLUS the one classic I'll talk about at the end of this post

BTW, I'm not putting My Type of Party on that short list, because it's an experimental track, and while I appreciate it as such, I'm not going to be listening to it a lot.

Admittedly, the second half gets more genuinely Westcoast.  But still, after the first listen, I'm not getting what the overall vision was for this album.  In hindsight, I can see why it was made available as a free mixtape download -- it's not as fully developed as From the Westside with Love II.  Maybe next time he'll nail it.

But having said all that, there is one saving grace to this album, and that is "Don't Call Me" with Too $hort.  IMO, it's a great song in the pure Westcoast tradition, and I don't just throw that word around lightly.  I will be listening to this song for years to come, I suspect.  I love it.  If you really like that classic Westcoast, pimpish, braggadocio groove, you owe it to yourself to listen to this banger.    I could definitely hear Pac on this from the All Eyez on Me era.

Overall, thanks Dom ... some good songs and one classic mixed in with some strange decisions and sloppiness.

-A fan

[Raiders4Life]

I like his previous two projects more. Like you mentioned, he's starting to repeat lines several times. That shit almost put me to sleep.