Fake For Real

Exalted being the third collaborative mixtape from Nacho Picasso and Blue Sky Black Death released in a few months, it was somehow expected that, at that stage, the Seattle rapper and the two producers would get a bit less relevant. But actually, it didn't happen that way. Released not long after Lord of the Fly, this project was, in reality, the best of the trilogy. It was also the first they didn't release for free. They might have assumed that, by then, their fans and listeners had become so addicted to their music, that they would be willing to pay for more.

Projects are, in the US, an equivalent for the French HLM. They are large real estate schemes, launched by the public authorities, and aimed at the poorest; and quite often, they end up being no-go areas, where criminality is the only alternative to poverty, and where violence and drugs reign. Of Haitian descent, Dieuson Octave grew up in one of these places: Golden Acres, in Pompano Beach, North of Fort Lauderdale. And most of his inspiration is coming from there, judging by the titles of two mixtapes he released while he was still a teenager: Project Baby, by the end of 2013, and the excellent Heart of the Projects, one year later.

False Hopes is not just one record, but many. Indeed, such were named several solo projects, released in the mid-naughties by various members of Doomtree, before they recorded a joint album with the same title. Prior to this, actually, P.O.S. and Cecil Otter had founded a duo under the same name, even before they created the Minneapolis collective. But others would reuse it as a manifesto, and more particularly their female rapper, Dessa Darling, or Dessa. With the five songs of her own version – songs so good that she would reuse them on her second album, Castor, The Twin – she delivered actually one of the best of the series.

In case some still have doubts about why mixtapes are so great, or if they wonder why rappers give for free what, actually, are real albums, they should have a close look at Future's career. Twice, he's been the herald of a new evolution of Atlanta's trap music based on Auto-Tune raps and vulnerable lyrics, a subgenre at the very core of the 2010's. By 2011, True Story and Streetz Calling had paved the way to Pluto, his first album. And after his second opus, Honest, hadn't met expectations, the rapper went back to the mixtape format, with a series of releases respectively titled Monster, Beast Mode and 56 Nights. Altogether, these had restored the critics' faith in Future, and helped DS2, his third album, collecting rave reviews.

Maybe people got bored, after all the craze around mixtape series like Dedication or Da Drought. Or, possibly, all were convinced now that Lil Wayne was on a downward slope. Or maybe it was no longer surprising, in the 2010's, to have major rappers releasing better mixtapes than their official albums; it had become a standard. Another theory might be that Weezy himself was now outpaced by the new transformation this musical format was quickly going through, while they became actual albums, instead of compilations of freestyles and existing tracks. Anyway, whatever the rationale was, the situation with Sorry 4 the Wait was the following: it didn't create as high expectations as the rapper's previous mixtapes.