Album Review: Pop Smoke - Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon

Pop Smoke's Posthumous album "Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon" has finally been released. After a messy start to the release week over the controversial album design art by Virgil Ablol received a lot of backlash, we have finally been given the project from Pop Smokes team after the 20-year-olds unexpected passing earlier this year.

This album opens perfectly and in pure Pop Smoke fashion, "Bad Bitch from Tokyo" is a 48-second warm-up to get the listener ready and hyped and is quickly followed by "Aim for the Moon" which features Quavo who has switched up multiple times on the beat with his melodic auto-tuned hooks over the drill type beat and he has done perfectly. The melodic finish to that track introduces us to a side of Pop Smoke on the next track "For the Night" that we did not get to see enough of before he passed. Pop shows us on this track that he can switch from your hard-hitting, bass-thumping tracks to holding his own with his melodies on much slower and emotion-driven tracks.

One of the biggest surprises of this album has to be the track "Something Special". Pop Smoke takes you back to the early 2000s with an RNB inspired love type track which brings Biggie type vibes to the project. This track shows that Pop Smoke was an artist that was very versatile and that he could switch up his style with ease. This track is definitely sad to hear as Pop Smoke was only getting started on his way to being a bonafide superstar. 

It's not easy to criticize a posthumous album because the artist never gets to hear the ere final project and sometimes labels that were behind the artist don't do justice to the final project. Although this is thankfully not the case with Pop Smokes project, under the guidance of 50 Cent, Pop Smokes album has done the talented artist justice and has shown us different sides to him with his craft and thankfully a lot of this was captured on record before his passing.

Overall this album was definitely very enjoyable and has done Pop's legacy right, this has been one of my favourite releases of 2020 so far.

Reviewed by: Aidan Treston