Taiwan really has become the land of independent rappers and singers making it big from social media. If someone had told me that so many talented acts would have come from Youtube, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. Especially during the era of Wang Lee Hom and Jay Chou(not that these two aren't still kicking cause they defiantly are.... Don't get me started on JJ Lin's reign...). E.SO is apart of this new generation of rappers who rose to fame due to garnering a fanbase on the inter webs. His album is called Outta Body.
I had somewhat of expectations for this album after watching some of his videos. However, I'm not going to lie, Outta Body gave me a lot of boring tricks in it's production.... at least for the first four or five tracks. Tracks that use repetitive choruses where you say the same phrase over and over again. Using English might seems cool to Taiwanese listeners but to me their just worrisome. I don't even like when American rappers do this. Don't you have any more lyrics up your sleeve? The tracks were also really short for some reason. E.SO starts to find his rhythm during certain parts of Outta Body. Moments such as I Wish You Were Here where he does a good mixture of singing and rapping which would remind you of old school Jay Chou. He has Jay's vocal style: A kind of laid back harmony which smooths out the core of most of the tracks after track five. The album actually gets better from there but sadly the great moments of Outta Control feel cut short by the tracks's lengths. The raps improve too after he gets more in the pocket of the beat. Latter tracks in the album really showcase the best E.SO has to offer. It's sad that you have to listen to a song about his Moneybag before you get there though.... That was the only wannabe "out in this Taiwan street gangster" track that I kinda liked. It took about two listens to get me to warm up to it.
I absolutely love the whole mood when he meloraps. He's not a conventional singer but he's good enough to make his own songs sound good. His flow sounds the best over either an acoustic sound or an old school RnB beat. I caught that he tried to take his sound really old school soul in one of the latter tracks on the album. I'm not mad at him. Outta Body should have cut out the filler tracks to make the whole album seem less like a demo tape.
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