MIND INVERSION

I remember being in tenth grade when Joe Budden’s first single “Pump it Up” came out. To be 100% honest, I didn’t care for it at all. After that track, it almost seemed like Joe fell flat off the face of the earth. From what I’ve gathered, Joe has released some mixtapes in the interim but nothing really serious… until Padded Room. It took me a while to even give this CD a complete listen because I had no idea what it was going to be like. Once I did start listening I just couldn’t get a grasp right away of how to feel. Joe has a line in the first track on the album “Now I Lay” that sums up the aforementioned statement perfectly, “It’d take you a long time to evaluate me”. It literally took me about 20 listens to get a good feel for this album, but my general consensus is that this album is damn good.

This album is one of the deepest darkest and most personal albums I’ve heard in a long time. Joe has a lot of issues that he gets off of his chest on this album. The name of the album Padded Room to me seems like much of a metaphor because the only way that Joe can be contained to let out everything he needs to is on this album. From the track “Now I Lay” it’s pretty obvious that we are about to powerfully plunge into Joe’s mind with no holding back. Joe spits, “Welcome everybody into the brain of a self-proclaimed sinner/even if he can’t win a nigga won’t surrender” and, “I ain’t psycho don’t belittle me now/it’s just a title cause they couldn’t figure me out”. Joe shows off his very nice wordplay right from the jump on the track “If I Gotta Go”, “We gonna party like it’s one-nine-nine-nine/somethin’ triggers makin’ my mind design crime/when at times my mind’s fine inclined to find dimes/I need my stars to align when signs say they benign”, and the trend continues for the rest of the track. Joe reminisces about some of his homies that passed to early on the track “Blood On The Wall” and takes some pretty hardcore shots at Prodigy at the same time. On the track “Do Tell” Joe spills his heart out to his family, almost as if it was his last written testament to his life.

My favorite track on this album is “Happy Holidays”, and I’m fairly certain that I’ve listened to that one track over 30 times in the last month or two. Joe spits a on-point narration of how, despite it being time for the holidays, Joe doesn’t change who he is just for the holidays. He spits one of my favorite lines I’ve heard in quite sometime on this track, “…I’m high beamin’ on a dark road/all my goals now ashes on charcoal/I spark stoves, disregard cars/just cuz’ my hearts cold carryin’ cargo”. He sums up the whole idea of the song in one line, “I won’t pretend like my everyday struggles gone away/so I’ma treat this like any normal day”.

To me the beats on this album could be a little bit better, but Joe does one hell of a job molding to these lyrics like pla-doe. There are also some tracks that I don’t care for too highly, but it doesn’t deter from the album greatly. Joe is on his way to becoming a premier lyricist in Hip-Hop and this album is a good testament to my statement. If you like albums that give great insight, and are absolutely oozing with passion, this one is for you.

8 Straight Jackets out of 10

This entry was posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 at 10:47 am and is filed under Music Reviews with tags Joe Budden, Padded Room, Pump It Up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.