Review | LilRed, ‘Godspeed’

LilRed’s ‘Godspeed’ is a solid project that shows flashes of greatness…

…but ultimately leaves much of its potential on the table.

The album’s opener “Chess Moves” is my favorite track on the ‘Godspeed’.

The beat choice is good, the lyrics are well-written, and the melodies are catchy. As much as I’m personally bored of this style of rap, LilRed brings enough uniqueness to the track to keep me interested. It’s a strong intro that made me want to listen to the rest of the project.

With all of that said, “Chess Moves” also typifies my two main issues with ‘Godspeed’ as a whole.

First, I felt the mixing was lackluster. I’ll spare the technical jargon and just say that the bass wanted to be knocking on this beat yet it was almost mixed out. This is true in many of the other songs on the project as well.

Second, there were moments were Lil Red’s flow felt shaky to me, particularly when he was rapping fast. I felt like there were too many syllables per bar at certain points.

This may sound like nitpicking but, for me, these seemingly minor technical issues were the difference between ‘Godspeed’ being an okay project and a great one. That’s not to say there weren’t songs that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Highlights included “Searching…” and “Difference” as well as both tracks with Cerulean, “Noises” and “Sidewalks End”. 

Overall, though I didn’t absolutely love ‘Godspeed’, I’ll still be paying attention to LilRed going forward and I think you should too.

He has a ton of potential and I fully expect to hear great music coming from him in the future.