What's /mu/'s honest opinions about Ab-Soul? I heard

>>74758768
First album was incredible.
Second album was incredibly weak.
Third album was incredibly shit.

Ab-Soul started out rhyming over a mix of NY Boom Bap and West Coast Sunny Califonia type rap beats. His mixtapes were mostly concerned with him talking about relatable real life shit, and reflected his relatively black middle class upbringing. That's not to say his life was easy, after all he has a very debilitating disease which very nearly killed him. Unlike Schoolboy, Jay or Kendrick his family owned a record store and he was around music for his whole life. He hooked up with TDE because he never left the studio or stopped writing ever, much like Kendrick. He was clearly never as skilled but he loved rhyming and making music a lot. His mixtapes were a good listen, not very heavy for if you wanted to ride around and it was sunny out, they suited perfectly.

Then he dropped Control System and a lot of that changed. His subject matter became more political, and conspiracy based, his rhyming ability, melody choices and flow improved many times over and TDE started giving him beats that were not Kdot throwaways. He started structuring songs that were really memorable as well as touching on his personal life. Terrorist Threats, Bohemian Grove, Double Standards, Mixed Emotions, Sopa, The Book of Soul. It's still his stand out project and is an album I still love.

But since then, it seems his many label issues has impacted his creativity, as well as his increased deep dive into this illuminatii and esotericism. He does not make it sound interesting. He makes himself sound incredibly stupid. And his wordplay is often focused so much on being overly clever it comes off as poor. This reached its lowest point on Do What Thou Wilt, and album TDE clearly did not want to put out and it's very clear why. Shit there's song called Wifey or Wifi, this is what he's passing for wordplay now.

I hope AB can find the balance between wordplay, content and melody again.

>>74758768
Ab soul is an artist that'll never have a good album, certain songs maybe, but never a cohesive album

>>74759054
dude has the lyricism, thats a given, but he fell off.