In wrestling, one of the euphoric moments is the debut of a brand new character with a cool-ass look and a devastating transfer—consider Brock Lesnar teleporting into the ring in 2002 with muscle tissue grown on his muscle tissue, leaving nothing however carnage. The onerous half is getting past that preliminary awe and turning right into a weekly persona, the kind of character that you just wish to latch onto. That’s kind of what Bruiser Wolf goes via on his second album, My Tales Acquired Tales.
The Bruiser Brigade standout is a type of rappers that would make you pull over to the facet of the street while you first hear them. Possibly for you it was one among his visitor turns on early 2021 albums by fellow Bruiser Brigade MCs J.U.S or Fats Ray, the place his flows sound like Bell from Willie Dynamite at 2x pace. Or possibly it was later that yr, when he stole the limelight on the Detroit crew’s Alchemist-produced posse minimize with a collage of doughboy recollections and witty punchlines. Most probably it was his 2021 album Dope Sport Silly, the place his conversational slick discuss mixed with Raphy beats that gave the impression of they need to be blasting out of a Cadillac Eldorado. It holds up effectively over 13 joints. Now he has to do it once more, and you may really feel the strain to undertake an incrementally extra typical model weighing on the album.
For one, the raps on My Tales Acquired Tales are much less funky than they have been on Dope Sport Silly. There’s nothing as out-there as him getting in his Curtis Mayfield bag for the grim but sticky hook of “Momma Was a Dopefiend” or the hyperactive and darkish chants of “the dope fiend my greatest good friend” on “Center Males” that come straight after Fats Ray’s hearty reinterpretation of fifty Cent’s timeless refrain. The closest Bruiser Wolf will get on this album is the tip of “Let the Younger Boys Eat,” the place he places his spin on the breezy sung melodies you would discover throughout Nineteen Nineties Bay Space rap albums. Even the beats—there’s nonetheless loads of Raphy, but in addition others like Harry Fraud and Dag—recall to mind Griselda’s hard-nosed soul samples moderately than, say, Cotton Involves Harlem.
