G.O.O.D. Music’s Cruel Summer is a strange album, with a posse of rappers, singers and producers all slave to Kanye’s regime there was vast amount of talent available for the group effort – Cruel Summer.

The first four tracks are incredible, R Kelly and Teyana Taylor sing with a high degree of compatibility and chemistry on To The World, Clique shows Big Sean drop one of the verses of his career, keeping up with Jay Z and Kanye’s massive spots on the song, we all know about Mercy and then New God Flow demonstrates how good a rapper Pusha T is, even up to Kanye. 

Then the album takes a turn for the worse at The Morning, it’s a mess of artists thrown onto an instrumental that any rapper would find difficult to give any justice, Cold is a slight improvement despite a pointless DJ Khaled cameo and then the worst tracks Higher and Sin City come, and they’re truly shocking. The next three tracks are all an improvement but again are just thrown at the album and seem misplaced and lost. With the only solo track on the album, Kid CuDi’s Creepers is just too little too late in an attempt to salvage this scattered album.

In summary, it appears as if, in an attempt to include all of his label’s musicians, Kanye has strewn together a batch of songs that lack conviction and execution, opting for Big Sean over Mos Def and Pusha T over Kid Cudi it seems Mr West hasn’t managed to capture the talents of his peers in a collaborative sense yet. Cruel Summer had so much potential with a mass of talent behind it, but when someone like Q Tip can’t make it onto the album and D’Baanj can, it was never going to be a huge success.