YPRichB: Well YPs about a month ago Flauce dropped his highly anticpated mixtape “Take it Personal”. We’ve featured Flauce’s material on our site since we first started in 09 and now the mixtape “Take it Personal” is finally here. We’ve already posted the mixtape (Download mixtape here) but now it’s time to give y’all a review. Obviously the YPs are fans but was the mixtape worth the wait?? Absolutely.
The mixtape starts out with three rapid fire tracks. These first 3 songs give Flauce room to breathe and show his ability to put punchlines together. The following song “Self Doubt” is a nice break from the lyrical onslaught as this track is very introspective and gives you insight into Flauce’s grind with lyrics like:
“Wake up with my eyes on the prize, if you ain’t never felt how I feel well then it’s kind of hard to describe/ Up at 6 running laps trying to get my wind to stay/ so I can give the crowd what they want when I hit the stage/
…12 hours of work that’s my usual then head to the crib to get ready for the studio/home by 2 trying to relax then I crawl in/3 hours of sleep then I do this shit all again”
Flauce continues to be a bit more introspective with a nice stretch of songs beginning with “Give me your Love” through “We Made It” touching on topics such as his issues with the music industry on “Mics Please” and rap’s fallen soldiers on “We Made It”.
A definite standout on the mixtape is “Got You Open”. The beat and flows on this song definitely go hand and hand and Flauce is on his A game on this track. Additionally “Look at what you made me” serves as a song to address some of the folks that shunned him in one way or another and tell them their overlooking him motivated him more than it hurt. With quotes such as: “I’m the one they passed up, threw me in the trash truck, say I didn’t have much, you can call it bad luck but (look at what you made me)” Like Flauce says at the end of the song, “it’s not a diss song, just a real song”.
Simply put Flauce definitely used this mixtape as a forum to show that he’s nice on the mic. Lyrically Flauce has plenty of punchlines and his music doesn’t seem forced or contrived. In terms of the beats he chose to rap over they fit well together and he didn’t really step out of this zone by trying to rap over beats that wouldn’t work for him. DJ Flash and DJ Skillz definitely made this feel like a traditional mixtape with drops and scratches etc.
I think Flauce set out to get your attention lyrically and to showcase his ability to rap. If that was the case then mission accomplished. However, next go round I would like Flauce to showcase his song writing ability a little bit more. He does that on a few tracks (Fear, Self Doubt, Look What You Made Me) but this mixtape was more of a lyrical exercise in my opinion. With this tape he’ll have your ears, but by focusing more on subject matter and song structure he has a chance to have your heart. One thing the tape shows is that he has the talent to do it.
