Adam Calhoun, Tom MacDonald: “The Brave” (Album Review)

The Brave is a recent project, the 2022 album being a collaboration between rappers Tom MacDonald and Adam Calhoun. This is the type of music I was expecting MacDonald’s other albums to be more like. While this is the album where MacDonald sounds the most comfortable and does his best performance wise, it’s sadly one step forward and many more backwards.

I found Fire Emojis, like many other tracks on the album, to be a “fine” song to listen to, albeit recognizing how corny the lyrics are and ultimately how bland everything is. And then I heard Madchild’s feature. I double checked my phone to make sure I was actually listening to real music and not having some sort of surreal dream. Madchild’s rapping sounded like he put on a Lil Wayne voice as a joke, but there were no laughs to be found. After checking out some of his songs, it seems like his Lil Wayne impression is just how he raps. It’s baffling that the biggest reaction I got from The Brave was from something that wasn’t from the two rappers that collaborated to make the album, but a strange feature. 

The political lyrics are an interesting thing to critique, because MacDonald and Calhoun provide many angles to approach how bad their writing abilities are. Even ignoring their political stances, it’s just astonishing how hypocritical, ignorant, and plainly untrue their statements are. I find it especially odd that they pretend to take a centrist stance and instead focus on a common sense of morality. On "In God We Trust”, MacDonald states that “both political parties are equally just as evil,” but only directly goes after the Democratic Party and left-leaning beliefs throughout the entire album. This exemplifies the larger scale level of disenguinity that is found on nearly every song here. “Free World” directly calls out people for “playing victims”, while The Brave has too many lyrics about how white people are the real ones being oppressed because people call them racist sometimes. At its best, this album can be argued as good-intentioned, but still harmful due to a willful ignorance and unwillingness to do anything except engage in strawmanning.

Out of the three Tom MacDonald albums I heard, this was the roughest one to listen to. While it’s possibly the highest quality of the three on a technical level, with better production, rapping, and a cleaner sound, the obliviousness is genuinely painful to hear. This is less of an album with something to say, and more of an album by people who love the sounds of their own voices. It’s one-dimensional and repetitive, yet somehow manages to be all over the place, as if they had flashcards of topics to cover. 

Seeing as this is the most recent album of the three, and showcases the direction that MacDonald is currently taking, it’s important to be direct: Tom MacDonald is a grifter, and this subject matter has made him an easy target, but has also given him a tightnit fan base. It’s disgusting to see how obvious this tactic is and how well it’s working for him. All the good qualities I’ve manage to glean from his music are rendered useless because I refuse to engage with his work any further than I already have. While this was an interesting project, it’s difficult to answer the question, “Was it worth it?” I’m not sure if it was, but I can be confident in my decision to move myself away from MacDonald as an artist.

 

Favorite Tracks: Revenge, Clout

Least Favorites: Fire Emojis, In God We Trust, Soldier, New World Order

Enjoyment: High 2

Critically: High 2

Arbitrary Number: 2.8/10