LP Look: Here I Am by J. Ivy

I'm a fan of J. Ivy. I have been since hearing him on the Kanye West track, "Never Let You Down" from Kanye's College Dropout album. Ivy has a verse in that track that I still think is one of the best parts of that whole album. A few months back I discovered that he performed the verse during a Def Poetry Jam, and that there's a clip on YouTube.




I've always thought that poem was really amazing, and meaningful. So then I started digging around other J. Ivy videos on YouTube and found another one that I could really relate to.

It's kind of amazing how much I can relate to "I Need To Write." There's so many times that I feel the exact same way, and I've thankfully been able to harness the healing powers of writing and use it as a form of therapy.
Anyway, the guy's a poetic genius as far as I'm concerned, so I'm just going to throw one more video up here  before I move on to his album.

Naturally since I loved all of his poetry so much, I figured that I'd probably love the studio album he released, too. I bought this on a bit of an impulse, and sadly, it turns out that "Here I Am" is not as thoroughly amazing as I'd hoped.
First off, I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting. I suppose I just expected every track to hit me in the same way that Kanye's "Never Let You Down" or his other poems did. Realistically, I shouldn't have expected that to be the case. What's on this album is a few good beats and catchy rhymes, surrounded by mostly mediocre material.
There are highlight tracks like War and 2012 that I like a lot, but the vast majority are either trying too hard to be catchy, or they don't try at all to be catchy; I'm not sure which case is worse.
War is easily the "single" of the album. It's gotten the most attention of all of the tracks, and I'd say that's deserved. It starts with a quote by Einstein that says "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." That quote plus the title should give a pretty good idea of what the song's about. It's a fine song.
That's the thing, though: even the better songs on the album are just "fine." There are a couple boring songs, but most of the worst ones I'd also describe as "fine." To me, this is an album of mediocrity. There are no real highs and no real lows. I feel like I'm on anti-depression medication when I listen to this album. I'll take some lows if I can have a few highs!
Maybe I'm being unfair, as I do enjoy some of the tracks, but I was just disappointed by this album.
If there's one thing I really like about this album, it's one of the final tracks called "End-Titled," in which J. Ivy basically runs through the ideas of each of the previous tracks in a more traditional poetic style. It's cool to hear the entire album wrapped up into a minute and a half long poem.
At the end of the day, disappointment was had. But I still think J. Ivy's a pretty cool dude, and I hope he continues writing poetry.