Hi, everyone. Bigthony Rushtano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this Lexa Gates album, Elite Vessel.

This is the latest album from up and coming New York rapper, Lexa Gates. She's been effectively building a cult internet following behind her music for a couple of years now as she really started to build momentum behind her stuff over the course of the pandemic.

Lately, her music and also her promo has been making more waves as she had this viral video on TikTok of her being locked into a glass box as people could choose to listen to her new album outside of it if they wanted. All this buzz drove me to try this new album out. And while it's not a perfect record, I think Lexa effectively makes the case that she is most definitely a rapper to watch over the next few years. That is, if you're the type of rap fan who values somebody who brings a lot of personal rhymes, has a way with words, also an entrancing delivery, not to mention a dry wit and a absurd sense of humor sometimes. Lexa also has a pretty nice ear for beats and a solid singing voice as well, so she can really be her own feature on track if she does need a sung chorus or something.

But yeah, a lot of what Lexa does here, I see creative overlap between her and the likes of Princess Nokia, a bit of Mac Miller, maybe Wiki of Ratking fame, or even some of these more recent abstract, some low-key jazz rap artists like Navy Blue, for example. And with some of the soul chops and drums on this record, too, she's really keeping that New York vibe alive with a DIY internet flair. With a few moments in the tracklist, they seem to pull from some of the cloud rap trends of the early 2010s, too.

Now, some of the best highlights on this album really lean into that relatability factor with Lexa rapping about a lot of normal girl stuff, musing about lovers and the stresses of everyday life, as as well as random unfiltered thoughts that just pop into her head. There are numerous solid tracks throughout the album, like "Thinking of You", which is an infatuation anthem of sorts that sees Lexa a bit torn. She is obsessed with with a particular person in mind, but yet also afraid of devotion. She misses this person, wants to be with this person, but also while they're talking with them, she's also texting other people. She wants someone who's going to be there to pay for her stuff at the store, but doesn't know about a wedding ring. She talks about her and this person getting on each other's nerves, maybe hitting them with a broom. There's a chaos to this track and its storytelling that is hilarious.

I would say there's a similar appeal to the song "Stupid" too, which has more of an intoxicating vibe all around. And despite the chorus being so woozy and delay-so, it still is quite snappy. And it's cool that Lexa's voice works in more psychedelic context so well. The track "What You Wish For" is a lot more concrete in terms of its flows, its drums, its chord progressions, and it opens up with some of the craziest bars on the record: "Four shots, 400 chickpeas / Probably got to take a fat shit for a leave."

Okay.

But honestly, this is not that ridiculous of a song when you look at the entire thing, as it is very much about the speed and pace at which her life is currently, with her seeing a bit of success in music while also trying to maintain her health and mental and emotional stability. With the way she's rapping about it, this is obviously something she's been working toward for quite a while.

But even at this very early stage, she is expressing some very clear second thoughts. I think this topic also comes through on the track "Stacy's Chips", where, again, through the speed and intensity of her life current day, she's losing track of herself. There's no time to cook. She's eating Stacy's Chips. Her nails are chipped.

Tracks like "Yourself" dive even further into these very tense feelings of anxiety and overthinking. As with most of the bars on this track, Lexa is very much in her own head. Love the killer soul chops strewn about the track, too, which is also a big selling point on "I Just Can't Be" where Lexa not just stuns lyrically, but vocally, too.

But yeah, there's a lot of good tracks, a lot of highlights throughout the album that most definitely make me curious to see what Lexa does next. But it's on the finer details and the overall, I guess, bigger picture of this record where I think it falters, as the opening track is pretty unceremonious. The song to follow from there, I think, really could use some retooling in terms of song structure as it really breezes by.

The closing track also could have been a bit punchier. And while I do appreciate "The Earth It Works in Funny Ways" as another personal moment on the album, it too ends pretty abruptly and is really just a bridge to nowhere. I think really more could have been added to it.

"Sweet Time" is, I think, well-intentioned with the angle it's working in terms of it being a love song and there being a back and forth between her and a feature. But I don't know if ZelooperZ was exactly the guy for it. While I do usually enjoy him a lot as a rapper, there's, I don't know, a somewhat limited context in which I think his lyrical style and vocal delivery work, and I'm not sure if a song like this is the one.

Then the last thing that really got on my nerves with this record was the vocal performance that Lexa gives on the track "Dirt", which is perplexing, honestly. Normally, the singing on this record is very good or solid at the very least, whereas what she tries to pull off here is strained, it's awkward, it is pretty much unlistenable to my ears. I don't know why it made the cut on the album, though I do think the song has a decent start. Instrumentally, rap-wise, it's as solid as anything else here, but the singing is just a bit too rough.

All that being said, though, I think Elite Vessel is a pretty good album and one that, again, shows Lexa Gates in a pretty good place in terms of where her art is moving lyrically, instrumentally, in terms of overall quality. She's just improving with every year she continues to do this.

If that trend continues, I could most definitely see her making an album that is actually quite great, which is why I'm feeling a light 7 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Lexa Gates. Forever.