Consumer Guide Album

Vince Staples: Hell Can Wait [Def Jam, 2014]
Thematically, there's not much new on this LA mixtape fixture's major-label debut. Nor is he much of an image-slinger. But he's so hard-hitting, so direct, so concise, and before too long so hooky too. Yeah, he does bleed Crip blue (or is that clue, it's so bonfusing). But the compact lucidity with which this EP details the ups and downs of the drug trade and warns women off his money feels less like advocacy, celebration, or autobiography than street reporting. And his best lines rise up when Ferguson moves him to something resembling political speech: "They expect respect and nonviolence/I refuse the right to be silent." A-