Dom Kennedy – From The Westside With Love II (REVIEW)

July 10, 2011 6 comments

Cop Westside II on iTunes.

Dom Kennedy has always fell through the cracks for me. Whenever his music was passed through my inbox or been slipped into my dashboard, I’ve never been one to gravitate towards it. Not that there’s anything all too offensive about it, but rarely have I heard anything exceptional enough to differentiate between the middle of the road, Hypebeast arena rappers of today. From the Westside with Love left very little impact on me last year and 2009′s FutureStreet/DrugSounds was even less compelling to me. Dom, the self professed “best Kennedy after Bobby”, fairs better with me on the sequel, but I still have some hangups.


II starts off with a prayer, but not like the awkwardly intense ones from every DMX album, this is a more soulful recourse about Dom’s career so far and where he’d like to take it; and, of course, what he’d like to repent for. Roosevelt provides one of my favorite beats for this opener and, though it’s run-of-the-mill reflexive rapper pastiche, it works in it’s earnestness. “Grind’n” follows with an equally laid-back instrumental, proving that Dom isn’t going for the knockout early, but is content with jabbing and sticking his way through the early rounds. There’s something oddly charming about the way Kennedy’s vocal inflection somewhat tickle’s the end of ear bar in the rhyme scheme here: “Quote it/You have been demoted/Your album came out, dammit/We ain’t even notice.” He’s a much more nimble rapper that I, admittedly, may have realized.

Where Dom’s releases have always snagged a lull for me, though, is when his focus shifts to females. Not that the subject isn’t justified and ripe for dissection, it’s just that Dom has little more than one gear when it comes to his talk about women, and it gets old. Quick. “Come Over” is an R&B effort that’s trunk-rattling enough to call a genuine hit, but shallow enough to make even the loyalist Top 40 fan cringe. “She Ain’t In Love” tries a bit harder, but I think I liked it better a few weeks ago when it was called “She Don’t Want a Man”… And it was by Curren$y. “I Love Dom” falls into a similar trap, but this time it’s more or less the beat that drags down the affair here. Cardo, Wiz Khalifa’s benefactor beatmaker, seems to be coming down with a case of the Lex Luger’s. I swear I’ve heard these drums somewhere before.

Elsewhere (look at me harping on cliche’s while rehashing review segue’s… I digress), Dom redeems himself by treating his listeners with ample guest appearances. Asher Roth and Mikey Rocks pop up on “New Jeeps”, with production from Chuck Inglish, and Dom really brings the heat while paired with two of the more sinewy wordsmiths out. Asher takes the cake, though: “Prefix, mixin’ with chicks, I tell ‘em read lips/D tits get you CC’d on my me-list/She says ‘Jimminy Crickets, give me three wish’/Take seat, right on the beach, fresh off the G6″. Big K.R.I.T. continue’s his run of Bun B-esque “renegades” on other rappers tracks with his spot on “2MPH”, and Casey Veggies shines above our host and fellow west coaster Schoolboy Q on Champagne Click’s superbly produced “Beats, Hoes & Rhymes”.

Dom has his moments around these shared highlights, especially on the funky “O.P.M.” (Other People’s Money), one of the few places where an R&B hook compliments Mr. Kennedy. He also seems to work an appropriate amount of pathos into the closing track, “Graduate”. It’s a slow counter-piece to the prayer that opened the album. Dom isn’t always this succinct in his message, which can really be a drawback. He talks a considerable amout of shit on Westside II, but not all of it is righteous. I’m not always compelled to believe his stories of hardship, or hustling, or late nights with, apparently, “my” girl, because it all seems like prerequisites to substance. Just meaningless boasting that Dom’s got to lay down to cushion the more fulfilling material that, I assume, he feels might bruise his ego. This all makes for an acceptable debut retail release, but I didn’t come away with anything more than what I got from part one. All the appropriate potential is here, but, with that, it lacks less that the necessary effort.

6.8/10