Sometimes being knowledgeable about hip hop can prevent you from approaching an album uncritically. If I listened to this record in a vacuum, I’d probably enjoy it a lot more. However, having enjoyed Gas Mask by The Left last year, I can’t help but think that Apollo Brown just used his leftover beats from that session and gave them to Hassaan Mackey to rhyme over. Don’t get me wrong, the beats are good - they just fit better in collaboration with Journalist 103 and DJ Soko. Mackey is a fairly new emcee from Rochester, New York, and having these beats don’t give him a chance to establish his own identity. It’s not that he sounds out of place or uncomfortable, but for an album that will be his introduction to a lot of listeners, he’s not being put in a position to set himself apart.

Mackey is a talented, though frustrating emcee. He demonstrates some interesting wordplay and does a good job being candid about how he grew up, with a song like “Dollar Bill Hill” describing his struggles as the child of a one-parent household. However, there are moments in this album where he drops words like “bitch” where it’s completely unnecessary, dragging down the record, such as on the same song, “Dollar Bill Hill,” where Mackey states, “They telling me to calm down/ ‘I can’t, bitch!” On top of that, he brings on an emcee who’s even more insensitive. Sean Born’s verse on “The Trenches” really ruins the record for me when he says, “All this gay shit is thinning out my patience.” I’m not familiar with Born aside from this verse, so I can’t speak to him as an artist or as a person. I do know that this kind of speech is harmful, and I hate that Mackey and Brown let it stay on the record.

Daily Bread is an incredibly frustrating record for these reasons. Brown is a very talented producer–I just wish he would have tried something new here. Mackey has talent on the mic–I just think he needs to hold himself to a higher standard and to not perpetuate ignorance and hate in his rhymes. This could have been an amazing record, but instead it’s just a middle-of-the-pack effort.