If you’re like me and disapproved of Future’s most recent release “MIXTAPE PLUTO,” then you may have been steered into listening to a project that released the same night. For me, this was Lil Tecca’s fourth studio album, “PLAN A.” Coming off of his successful 2023 album, “TEC,” I expect Lil Tecca to deliver on this album as well.
As always, we’ll dive into how Lil Tecca did on this project. Overall, I believe that he did pretty well.
He does what he usually does on his tracks and simply raps over the instrumentals with ease. Each beat is made just for him so it’s hard for him to not sound good from track to track.
Some standout songs are “TASTE” and “I CAN’T LET GO.” As for “TASTE,” I thoroughly enjoyed what Tecca did sonically. I loved his flow and vocals during the entire track. I thought it merged amazingly well with the production of the song.
On “I CAN’T LET GO,” we see Tecca imitate the feature artist, Don Toliver, and I loved everything about his verses. I see myself liking quite a bit of Don Toliver songs, so this comes as no surprise to me. On top of this, Tecca continues to rap his heart out when stops copying Don, showing off how he grew his rapping capabilities.
Side note, random lyric that I’m bringing up simply because I thought it was smart and clever. Off of “4U” we have this lyric, “Her and her friends come. She gettin’ way too physical, I’m callin’ AND1.” AND1 being a term used when a player is fouled for being too physical in basketball. I heard this lyric while listening to the album and gave out a chuckle when I first heard it. At the end of the day, Lil Tecca did great in my book.
This next section is short this time around since there is only one feature on the album. That being Don Toliver off of “I CAN’T LET GO.” Don has been on one as of now, most recently releasing his fourth studio album, “HARDSTONE PSYCHO,” this album being my personal favorite.
As for his feature, I love it. In all reality, this is more of Don Toliver’s song than it is Tecca’s. Tecca only has one verse while Don has three choruses and his own verse on the track. Per usual, he offers melodic raps for both his verse and chorus, those of which I enjoy. With nothing else to really say, I believe that the feature on the album was an outstanding addition to the record.
Moving onto the production of the project. For the most part, “PLAN A” offers the typical trap beats you would encounter while listening to present-day trap music. With this being said, I do still have a few standout tracks that I believe are great sonically. This includes “TASTE,” “I CAN’T LET GO,” “TIME & A PLACE” AND “ALL THE TIME.”
“TASTE” gives out a very smooth instrumental which matches Lil Tecca music style.
“I CAN’T LET GO” offers a faster beat than usual to match Don Toliver’s rock approach to his music. This comes as no surprise since Don covers most of the runtime on the track.
Next, “TIME & A PLACE” opens up with an ethereal instrumentation before the beat drops and goes into the main portion of the song. The usual trap production style is used here but some background sounds are used to make it just different enough.
Lastly, “ALL THE TIME” yet again softens the beat and allows for Tecca to get slightly more melodic than usual. Just like “TIME & A PLACE,” this track isn’t all that different from the rest of the tracks, but does offer slightly different sounds that helps differentiate it from other tracks. With this, the production is good on the album.
Next up, the replayability of the record. While the album isn’t too long, clocking in at 44 minutes, the album does start to become a drag near the last third of the runtime.
Eighteen tracks is near the limit of what I’d like from an album, but these tracks apart from the few standouts I talked about all sound the same. This makes a few three-minute songs seem like one really big song, and it makes the album seem like it’ll never end.
On the other hand, I did come back a few times to the album simply for the amazing transitions from track to track. I love transitions purely because most artists let the instrumental play from one to the next, leaving the production having a chance to shine. Although the transitions are great, it doesn’t outweigh the negative of the album having too many songs that sound alike. Because of this, the album’s replayability is mediocre at best.
With all points being accounted for, I for one believe that this album was decent, despite my complaints. While there are multiple things holding this album back, there are various things such as Lil Tecca’s performances, Don Toliver’s inclusion and some of the production that all bring the album up.
Because of this, Lil Tecca’s “PLAN A” gets a 6 out of 10 from me.