Big Boi stopped by Electric Lady Studios to share half of his upcoming album Boomiverse.
Though previously unspecified, the record will be a double disk feature, marketed as “sack 1” and “sack 2”. We got to hear all of sack 1 save for the last track featuring Cee-Lo, as it wasn’t finished, but he did share a snippet of Cee-Lo’s verse. On the topic of guests, there are a handful of Killer Mike features throughout the record, all of which are amazing. Jeezy joins in for “Kill Jill” and there’s also a posthumous Pimp C verse on one of the tracks that is greatly paid justice.
The mood for Sack 1 of Boomiverse is an interesting evolution for Big Boi’s sound. It’s evident he’s trying new sounds on for size, which honestly shouldn’t be that much of a surprise considering that pushing new sounds was practically Outkast’s mantra. The first disc finds its cohesion in Big Boi’s lyrics and themes while the music spreads out to overflow into a few different genres. There are tracks that feature EDM type beats, pop vocals, auto-tune, and a made-for-summer song that sounds very akin to DRAM’s broccoli. With this much variation on the first disc, I’m curious to hear what will come on the second half. For now we can really just speculate. The first half of Boomiverse boils down to a well executed exploration of the types of music Hip Hop can stretch to fill. It was enjoyable and worth a listen when it drops.