With ‘Long Live Mexico’, Atlanta rapper and YSL signee Lil Keed presents an enjoyable, yet unoriginal and overlong project. Heavily influenced by Young Thug, the project is named in memorium after his friend ‘Mexico’, who passed away at the beginning of the year. At a lengthy 19 tracks, is Lil Keed able to deliver on a star-studded tracklist?
The project starts off strong, with woozy trap bangers ‘Ride the Wave’ and ‘Oh My God’. Throughout the project, Keed consistently maintains a bass-heavy, relaxed instrumental sound similar to Gunna’s ‘Drip or Drown 2’ project. Track 3, ‘Anybody’, featuring Atlanta rappers Lil Duke and Gunna, is a particular standout, with Keed drowsily rapping over a laidback guitar instrumental.
However, Lil Keed fails to maintain the listeners attention throughout the record. ‘Long Live Mexico’ quickly becomes repetitive, with the vast majority of songs sounding very similar in their execution. Featuring bland lyricism and basic trap beats, the tracklist fails to capitalise on a few standout moments from Keed. Indeed, the Young Thug assisted ‘Proud of Me’ is a captivating and infectious track. Concise and featuring a standout Thugger verse, it is a fantastic song to end the record. However, Keed rarely reaches such levels throughout the project.
Young Thug’s influence on Keed is constantly present throughout ‘Long Live Mexico’. Indeed, on ‘Million Dollar Mansion’ the pair sound so similar it is often difficult to distinguish between them. Similar to Gunna, Keed borrows heavily from Thug, embracing his signature melodies and high pitched vocals. This prevents Keed from establishing an identity, therefore making the mixtape unoriginal and often bland in its presentation.
Long Live Mexico’ contains a star-studded tracklist, featuring the likes of Lil Uzi Vert, the currently imprisoned YNW Melly, Nav, Gunna and more. However, many of these features are dull in their presentation, not adding anything significant to the songs they feature on. Despite this, Lil Uzi Vert maintains his consistent feature record on ‘Pull Up’, providing an energetic and catchy performance alongside YNW Melly.
Overall, though ‘Long Live Mexico’ has numerous enjoyable moments, it fails to capitalise on it’s star-studded tracklist, presenting yet another dull and unoriginal YSL project. At 19 songs, the mixtape contains far too much filler, with Keed failing to establish his identity throughout the project.
4.1/10
Written by Jacob Matthews
Masterpiece Music 