3 out of 5

Label: Stophouse Music Group

Produced by: Jacob Anderson, Various

I had a narrative here about the different eras of Prof’s approach – which I will return to in a moment – but in revisiting his catalog, I’m also surprised to see that some of the flaws that haunt Good Time Boy have kind of… always been there. It’s just how Prof chooses to stress the sides of his musicality that bring it out, to greater or lesser degrees.

But let’s talk about eras, by firstly saying: I love Prof. I love the great albums; I love the ones that are okay. The uniqueness of his style (both his actual presentation / persona and his rapping style), his beats, and his inventive ways of lyrically belaboring a topic – generally the popular topic of being great at what he does – have all proven innate. Eight or Ten albums deep, however you count, and though there’s certainly a Prof sound and flow, being able to predict how he adapts that sound to a newly discovered hook is impossible; maybe the well runs dry tomorrow, but Prof – Jacob Anderson – has shown that this stuff is in his bones.

With that established, the different “sides” of Prof – the playboy, the hustler, the gangster, the lover, the sad dude, the serious dude – all tend to appear on any given release, and the aforementioned eras can somewhat be defined by what persona gets more airtime, and that has aligned with how his beats get produced. To me, we’re in a third era now, and it’s definitely not a reinvention, but it is slowly bringing the sad and serious more to the fore, which is, arguably, maturity. The thing is, while these songs can absolutely tear me apart when dosed correctly (‘Gasoline’ on Liability being a prime example), the more space allotted to them, the more Prof has to fiddle with the approach to keep it fresh, and given that much of the other personas enable the “louder” side of Anderson – via circus-like beats, musical genre mish-mashes, nonsense rhymes, and insane colors in the videos (Prof’s vids prove him as the OkGo of the rap world) – the serious tunes tend to be more muted and, hm, a bit more common sounding. Prof can also sing, which he tends to make more use of on these tracks, and again, it’s a dose thing: how much singing until it’s no longer rapping? I’m not here to necessarily police that, but there’s a good chunk of Good Time Boy that could be considered radio rap, or pop. That’s not a bad thing, and to be clear, there’s still a definite Prof flavor to these tunes, but we’ve gone from one or two tracks to the entire back half of the album. This was the direction of Horse as well, but the themes there felt a little darker, which gave the serious side of the disc some grit. Good Time Boy has hit that mark where Jacob is thinking of family and the future, and, I dunno, I tend to not connect with that stuff as much. Even allowing for that though, it just doesn’t feel as deep overall: my main criticism of this album is that it’s pretty shallow, to the extent that the party boy side of Prof takes a dip as well, relying on disconnected guest stars and banging beats to carry us through less-dense-than-usual bars. The search for profundity makes one commit the age-old sin of saying simple things and thinking they hit hard.

Back to the eras, and some positivity. I’d roughly break Prof’s run so far into the pre-Rhymesayers era, Rhymesayers, and now post-RS. And the differences are pretty logical when using that as the measure: early Prof has the rough edges of indie rap, but backed by Jacob’s ever-irrepressible energy and penchant for weird / off-kilter beats and cadences. It’s peppered with in-house references to his crew, and sets a more general tone for the personas mentioned above. With Rhymesayers, it became a goal to be the party boy in the house: be the dude amongst the “serious” rappers with a pair of panties on his head. Beats became sparser as the circus-y, sillier vibes were played up. Post-Rhymesayers, following the trend, is the response to the party boy, as we see Prof became much more involved with the production, the beats get wildly layered, and the themes tricky as all hell to pull off. Good Time Boy is definitely the next step down that path, I’m just criticizing its balance: Prof often outshines his guest stars, but this is the first album where almost none of them feel like they’re rapping on the same song – just following the beat; they seem moreso selected for their profile than what they actually contribute: an imbalance of vibes versus content. The title track is a great representation of how this can slice another way: it’s a well-intentioned song about the luck Prof has had living his wild life and not succumbing to its tribulations, but it has practically only one verse, and though the beat is fire, that verse can’t quite merge the sober and crass sides of then Prof persona.

On the plus side, despite my knocking the comparative simplicity of some tracks, this is still Prof, and this is absolutely the first Prof album where every song has a wild hook to it, and the production in general is just unbelievable. If you’ve only listened to these as videos, you owe it to yourself to put some headphones on and get the full treatment. It’s rich and layered stuff, with so many fine touches along the way; no skimping on atmosphere. The first half of the album, guest bars being what they are, is also a non-stop ride. Yeah, maybe the lyrics are thinner than usual, but 80% of the amount of clever phrases of the usual Prof quantity is still, I promise, quite a few, and combine that with the aforementioned hooks… Plus, there are some signs of Horse’s darkness that even surpass my expectations for how Anderson views the world: intro song A Crawl Through Low Tide has some really bleak imagery I’d be interested to hear him pursue, and later on, Reaching For Fire is one of the more serious tracks that goes more down the Gasoline road versus the somewhat precious Imposter, or gospel-tinged Garden of Eden – it combines touches of lyricism and Prof-y beats with the sincerity I think the album is striving for, for better or worse.

If we follow the trend of the eras, either the persona balance shifts into a new era, or the straight-faced stuff gets played up even more. And maybe I should be open to the latter; maybe Anderson, giving himself fully over to that, is able to push into even more surprising territory. Whatever the case, it will be an interesting experience, even – as with Good Time Boy – I might not rank it as a favorite.