Apollo Brown has been building his name as a producer over the last couple years, whether it be his work with The Left or Brown Study or his solo instrumental album, Clouds. This isn’t to say there haven’t been any bumps along the way. His album with Hassaan Mackey, Daily Bread, released last year, featured uninspired production and lyrics and left me wanting. I’m sad to say that’s the case again with his latest album, Trophies, done in collaboration with D.I.T.C. emcee OC.

When Brown is inspired, he’s capable of some really creative and soulful beats. At other times, it feels like he’s simply going through the motions. At no point on Trophies do I feel excited by any of Brown’s beats. For a brief second, I though he might be onto something with “The First,” which chops up Cream’s “White Room,” in a way that’s less than obvious, but it never really clicks. With that exception, the album comes across as generic, and as a result, it’s not very memorable. Of course, it doesn’t help matters that OC doesn’t bring it on the mic. His lyrics on Trophies mostly fall in the range between passable and questionable. A song like “Anotha One,” his ode to weed, isn’t terrible, but he doesn’t make any effort to set his songs apart, and so it just becomes yet another hip hop songs about marijuana where it will surely get lost in the middle of the pack. For a guy that spends the chorus of “Prove Me Wrong” bragging about how his brain goes a mile-a-minute, we don’t get any songs that make you sit up and pay attention. His most offensive effort is “Caught Up,” a song in which I’m sure OC meant to provide a sympathetic shoulder for women, but in practice, finds him on his high horse where he does a lot of slut shaming and speculating as to the motives for women’s behavior. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt with intention, but I just feel like this song is going to do more harm than good.

Pedigree does not an album make. Trophies is one of the most disappointing albums of the year, as a producer phones it in and an emcee wavers between saying nothing new and saying something ignorant. No trophies are necessary here because Apollo Brown and OC haven’t given us anything worth praising.