17 Sep Terius "The-Dream" Nash – 1977 | Album Review

The-Dream‘s latest project, a free album titled 1977, comes under his government name Terius Nash. Apparently the head honchos at Def Jam weren’t best pleased about original material being given away, free of charge. That being said, the album is still vintage RadioKilla; if you’ve been under a rock for the last four years, vintage Dream is chauvinistic pop R&B, with witty and crude references for days, in tandem with the biggest gangsta rap attitude a singer could possibly have. With Beyonce, Rihanna and Justin Bieber as some just of the names he has listed as clients, The-Dream’s strengths are not his vocal chords, or lack of them, but his songwriting.

From the offset, Dream pleads his case on the brilliant intro track, “Wake Me When It’s Over” with its underwater warbled sound effects which sounds like they came from Drake’s producer Noah “40” Shebib. ‘Life on the internet/ I look like a devil/ But you were wearing the red dress/ holding the shovel’.

“Ghetto” sees Dream on great form, starting with a chopped and screwed sample of one his ATLien gangsta rap verses, Mr Nash proclaims his love for a former love from the projects, whilst his musical pairing Big Sean doesn’t feel like a generic collaboration between two label-mates but two artists who actually share chemistry [or happened to connect through the probable e-mails they were sending back and forth to one another].

Listen to The-Dream ft. Big Sean – “Ghetto”:

The album has its peak and troughs; and harshly, the latter comes when RadioKilla Records artist Casha is introduced to the project. Yung Berg fans may remember her from Berg’s 2008 single “Business” which featured the songstress. She doesn’t possess a great voice and unfortunately there isn’t anything remarkable about Casha in terms of her wit, subject matter or style on “Rolex,” which samples the world famous Ricky Ross grunt and leads to Dream trying his hand at singing in Auto-Tune. Unfortunately the results are less than stellar.

Listen to The-Dream ft. Pharrell – “Real”:

Pharrell Williams and The-Dream on “Real” flaunt their riches in the most arrogant of ways with Skateboard P delivering a quite brilliant shallow verse littered with colourful language, before the disappointing, listless showcloser “Form Of Flattery” provides thinly veiled jabs at R&B upstarts such as Frank Ocean and especially The Weeknd.

1977 is a project tinged with a man dealing with a break-up and its reasons – plus how good his latest Rolex is [the last matter aside, one can’t help but think his failed marriage to Christina Milian might’ve inspired much of the material]. Overall, the album has nothing on any of Dream’s Love… albums – but this can be expected from a free project. That being said, 1977 does definitely whet the appetite for Love IV: Diary Of A Mad Man, tentatively scheduled for release at the end of the year.

Terius Nash – 1977
Released: August 31, 2011
Download: Terius Nash – 1977