Review: Young Sensation's C.H.I.L.L. (Cool High Intellectual Loving Life)

Maybe it was a ruse, a misdirection of sorts? Maybe he's like the drunk villager in the kung-fu movies, fumbling around, moving in an only seemingly incoherent manner?

Ignore that he decided to call himself Young Sensation. Ignore that he decided to call his tape C.H.I.L.L. (Cool High Intellectual Loving Life). He and has tape are both better, both more creative, both more dexterous than their names imply.

"I'm making music, you just kinda rhyme." - Jackie Chan, Drunken Master

On "Paper I'm Chasin'," a swirling menace coiled around a J. Dawg sample, YS advocates the merits of commerce in a manner that manages to make being trite clever ("In my car trying to get [money], that's a Chevy chase").

On "Gotta Do," he flicks the tempo of his cadence at will.

On "Come On," the album's best song, he is laissez-faire cool, wandering around the fringes of The Prodeuser's cosmic production, his thoughts free flowing and existential. At one point, he spouts, "Riding down the freeway, doing sixty-five, bad bitch with me and you know that she's a dime," and it sounds like everything else ever. Then, glowing and smart, he lets it unravel completely ("And since she's a dime I'm about to break her down, put her in the blunt and pass her all around).

There are pieces that are ill-conceived ("Show Biznezz," where he pretends like he's already navigated the industry) or fettered ("All Good," which boxes in his charm, and "When I Was Younger," which tries extra hard to be nostalgic) or cumbersome (he does a fair amount of the Let Me Talk For Second thing), but C.H.I.L.L. is largely a positive, likeable tape.

Download it.

Follow Young Sensation on Twitter at @YoungSensation. Download C.H.I.L.L. on the Internet.