D.R.A.M. - Gahdamn! (EP Review)

D.R.A.M. has probably had a pretty hectic week leading up the release of his new EP. The artist launched a pretty successful project that gained him notoriety called 1EpicSummer. It contained a buzz worthy song called "Cha Cha". The song itself was catchy, interesting, and pretty much everyone had an opinion on whether or not Drake jacked a lot of elements for his very popular Billboard topping song "Hotline Bling" all of last week. D.R.A.M. himself confirmed in a series of tweets that he believed it to be true. It's hard to miss the similarities. All of that interest brought in a lot of new listeners who wanted to check out D.R.A.M. which might help him out with this new EP.

1EpicSummer has quite a few good songs on it. With all the interest around "Cha Cha" vs "Hotline Bling" it felt like D.R.A.M. needed a good batch of songs because he had something to prove with this new release. The song "$" features long time Chance The Rapper collaborator Donnie Trumpet. It's an incredibly infectious song. D.R.A.M.'s vocals paired with the trumpet in the song sound really cool and the whole song has a bouncy kind of positive feel to the music. Meanwhile "Signals" sounds like smooth, woozy lazy Sunday morning music. It's infectious, again, which is something most of the songs on this EP have in common. The production is really nice and catchy while D.R.A.M.'s vocal approach is interesting and kind of stand out in terms of the way he approaches the track. He's not the world's best vocalist, be it singing or rapping, but he has a ton of style in his delivery and that's usually the way he's able to make the songs work. His vocal approach has character and personality and it adds a ton to pretty much every song on the EP. I really liked the more straight forward rap closer, "Okden". The chorus is pretty neat on the song and I like that D.R.A.M. chose to end the EP with more of a rap song. He has pretty good flow over the spacious slow moving beat. He becomes the most exciting part of the song and I think that's a strong way to end the EP.

Overall, this is a pretty cool EP. It's cohesive, fun to listen to, has a great vibe, and I think the songs grow on me more with repeated listens. It may not have a song quite as stand out as "Cha Cha", but it has a couple that come close, at least. This is one of the more interesting EPs I've heard this year and it's definitely worth checking out.