Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
MOBB, the duo of Mino and Bobby, released “Full House” recently, and despite all the flaws and the typical pitfalls of swegness, they combined on a song that I enjoyed nevertheless.
The instrumental starts rough in a positive way, with a pulsating beat that sets up for the inevitable bass drop, and boy what a fat bass drop it is. The bass provides the a solid canvas to paint rap verse over, and Bobby and Mino both utilize it well. The thing that surprised me is that Bobby starts the song off rapping, and he does so without that gimmick bullshit growling, which immediately makes him infinitely more listenable. He kills the rapid-fire delivery initially … and then he unfortunately switches back to the bullshit for the pre-chorus, but it’s more positive than negative. Similarly, Mino takes over in the second verse to great success (especially the section he goes to a staggered flow), at least until he starts yelling for the pre-chorus. I realize that’s supposed to be a feature and not a drawback for the song, but it doesn’t work for me. Luckily the time spent on that stuff is minimal, and the rapping itself is a draw here.
All of that of course leads up to the chorus, and while I have complaints about the unnecessary processing, the hook was effective as it served as a smooth reprieve from all the energy expended in the build. It has an infectious groove to it that grows and grows on you with repeated listens, and it contributes a great deal to the success of the track.
I just wish the track continued to progress normally from there, even if it would be a bit basic, because I wasn’t feeling the bridge at all. The processing was already a bit much during the hook, but I could tolerate it. This was another story, because the hook itself was already a comedown from the volume of the verses and pre-chorus, but the bridge temporarily sucked the life out of the track.
Still, despite my complaints about sections of the track, even after a half dozen listens I was feeling enough of the song that the replay value was intact and it became more and more apparent to me that the positives outweighed the negatives.
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The music video was … I mean it was typical affair for what you’d expect Korean hip-hop to do with a song like this that’s supposed to be a banger. And thus, it was a mess.
Why couldn’t they just keep the styling to something smooth that’s still cool but isn’t cringeworthy? Nobody ever knows, do they?
Still though, while I shouldn’t be into this track for the reasons I’ve already cited above, the good just far outweighs the bad. When it comes down to it, “Full House” has multiple elements that are addictive, including performances by the duo themselves. And those elements have made it embarrassingly impossible for me to not hit the replay button over and over, so there’s no other conclusion to reach other than to rate this a rousing success.
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“Full House”
