Artist: Gorilla Zoe
Album: Don't Feed Da Animals
Label: Atlantic
Release Date: March 17, 2009
Grade: D+
After replacing Young Jeezy in Boyz N Da Hood and releasing his own project, Welcome to the Zoo, Gorilla Zoe returns with his lackluster second effort, Don't Feed Da Animals.
The album, which on more than one occasion utilizes auto-tune, fails to feed the listener's ears.
The opener "Untamed Gorilla," featuring JC, is one of the few tracks on the album where Zoe doesn't attempt to both sing and rap. "What It Is," featuring Rick Ross, is a good horn-driven 808's beat down. Ross steals the show, though, with a faster than usual flow, and saves the song from Gorilla Zoe's predictable raps.
The Lil Wayne featured first single "Lost" is the focal point of the album and its definitive highlight. It is the only song on the album that blends Zoe's voice and auto-tune to give a harmonious story of a man lost and lonely in the world-not to mention a solid short verse by Weezy F Baby himself.
Unlike artists such as Lil Wayne and Kanye West who use auto-tune to alter their sound, Zoe's gruff yet drowsy voice doesn't complement the sound at all. This inharmonic union sticks out like a sore thumb on tracks like "Dope Boy," which unsuccessfully tries to sound like T.I.'s hit "Whatever You Like," but ends up not making any kind of sense. The Drumma Boy-produced "I Got It" sounds much like any other song by a rapper trying to sing these days, and while it has a somewhat catchy chorus, the song itself is bad enough to skip.
The track "I'm Dumb" is nothing but four minutes of Zoe talking about how dumb he is. After the first couple minutes of the song, you'll realize how dumb you are for listening to it in its entirety.
"S on 'Em" is one of the worst rap songs this year, not to mention disgusting, as it's hard to tell if he's talking about jewelry, cars or diarrhea.
"So Sick" is another pointless song, although Zoe's singing is so bad that you have no choice but to laugh at it. Maybe this is because Zoe's singing voice combined with auto-tune is a horrible mix. He comes across not as a singer, but a whiney old man with a robotic recording device.
Gorilla Zoe's Don't Feed Da Animal is simply not a good album. The sad part about it is that it's not even the year's worst release. "Lost" is no doubt a song worthy of downloading, but the rest of the album... not so much. Save yourself an hour of audio indigestion and don't feed your ears this unsettling disappointment.
