By ELLIOT AVE-LALLEMANT, RICKY MCGREGORY and COOPER RATHMANN
A few weeks ago, American singer 4batz released his second album titled “Still Shinin,” which was full of interesting artistic choices. The first time anyone probably ever heard of 4batz was in December 2023 when he released his single entitled “act ii: date @ 8,” which saw a rise in popularity and even scored 4batz a Drake feature (though that’s not a flex in this day and age). Either way, he disappeared for a while, with many labeling him another unsuccessful industry plant, and this album proves that. The songs all feel unfinished and directionless, with the features doing most of the work for 4batz on this album.
The way 4batz chose to title the songs might be the most interesting thing about this project, with each song starting with “act” followed by a different roman numeral. Other than that though, the songs themselves sounded very uninspired. Songs like “could we last 4ever?” and “done sippin” have very little autotune, instead relying on 4batz’s unprocessed vocals. The lack of autotune sounds unprofessional and unfinished, and those songs or verses shouldn’t have been cleared for release by any kind of producer.
There are only four features on this album, with most of them overshadowing 4batz’s own performance. FLO’s verse on “twentyfoe7” was a great addition and should have definitely been used more throughout the song. Leon Thomas’ feature on “she ain’t no angel” was also a highlight, although it was hard to differentiate between the two voices.
The lyricism in this album was almost nonexistent and unmemorable. The only lyric we can confidently remember was “pussy need a membership” on “can u?”
Overall, while we enjoyed a few tracks like “She ain’t no angel,” “my lil shootah,” and “twentyfoe7,” but the unprofessional nature of several tracks and the lack of a coherent theme outside of unprotected sex, makes this album unrecommendable. To quote Ricky directly, “4batz’s new album is so buns that it makes me sick. I wanted to review some old [NBA] YoungBoy instead but they said no, so here we are.”
Ricky is right, though. If it was an NBA YoungBoy review, there probably would have been more of an article.
Overall rating: 3.5/10
Featured Image: “Still Shinin’” Album Cover, Spotify
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