Superheros spittin straight BARS?!?!! (Mixtape Review)

What’s goin on guys! It’s Malik aka Leek3mWavyy and of course I am here to put all of you on another music wave, as per usual. Now if you read my bio (which I hope you did) you will know that I am a music lover. Mostly Hip Hop/Rap but I also listen to R&B, old school soul, Pop and Techno/Dub step from time to time. Occasionally I’ll listen to some J-Pop as well, mostly because they are from my favorite Anime shows, but it just depends on what catches my ears. First of all shoutout to my homie Jay for putting me on this mixtape in 2016, he is also a comic book fan like I am and we’ve been homies since 2008. He suggested that I listen to this mixtape, it is 7 tracks long about 20 minutes runtime, and each track is based off of...wait for it….comic book characters! So as a fan of Hip Hop/Rap and comic books I was immediately sold on this idea. The artist behind this mastermind of an idea is Trav B. Ryan and the title of the mixtape is “ComixTape, Vol. 1”.

Like I said, the mixtape has 7 songs with one of them being an interlude, but the rest of the tracks are rap songs. All the songs with crazy nice beats, heavy bass for you bass lovers and just BARS. Trav B. Ryan was real creative with the way he crafted the songs, it all started on his YouTube channel where he had certain videos titled something like “What if ___(insert superhero name”) was a rapper”. The first track, titled“Run the Knight”, is rap track solely from the perspective of Batman where he actually pays homage to the 90s animated TV show with an excerpt from it at the beginning of the song. He begins to talk about Batman’s villains, his parents death and other lines that let you know he did his research on the character. Second track is titled “Bouncin off Me”, based from the perspective from SuperMan, is funny by itself because that is exactly what happens with bullets on him! With this track it has a little more bounce to it (no pun intended lol) but of course there are some funny lines in this track seat. For example, one line I found real funny and creative was when Trav said “in the meantime I’m gettin BRAINiac in the back back seat” which is supposed to be wordplay on getting certain treatment in the backseat of a car while referencing a Superman Villain. This track has a lot of nice lines like that, not to mention the beat just really bumps! The next track is titled “Venom Proof”, which to me is just FIRE because it is from the perspective of my favorite Superhero EVER Spider-Man. With more clever wordplay and a laid back beat, but not super laid back, I think this captures the character of Peter Parker as a rapper truly. Mentioning things such as doing everything for his Uncle Ben along with other Spider-Man easter eggs. Now "King, Warrior, Scholar" is about none other than everyones favorite king of Wakanda, Black Panther. Of course there are some more funny lines, such as “Short dude with a claw tryna rip me off, what I look like a bandaid!?”. I definitely chuckled at that line when I first heard it because it was so clever and I think it explains the nature of Black Panther and his main nemesis “The Klaw” very well. And of course in the chorus he had to add a little easter egg saying “Tryna be a better king with Storm both ways we gonna rain/reign on yall!”. That was a great play on words because of the nature that these two marvel characters shared, since they were once married and served as both King and Queen of Wakanda, creating a whole double entendre. Reign on y’all (as king and queen), and rain on y’all (because Storm controls the weather). Would I have liked a more kind of african beat for that particular song, but I understand why it wasn’t like that and it more than likely would’ve thrown off the rhythm of the tape. So I have to say that this track is one of my least favorite tracks, but it’s still fire...just not as fire as the first 3. I won’t get too much into the interlude, I will let you all dive into that one yourselves when you listen to this mixtape. I will say that the next track “Make it Out Alive” is not one of my favorite tracks either, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t flow with the tape. That track is actually about the Suicide Squad, and I definitely appreciated how Trav managed to call out everyone’s name from the squad with clever wordplay such as “I got new shoes those are Killer Crocs, each kick feel like a bag of rocks”. That was smooth, and maybe it was just the chorus that didn’t sit well with me either. Ooooorrrrrr maybe it was that trash “Suicide Squad” movie that left a bad taste in my mouth (even though I liked this song better than that movie, craxy right?!). The last track on this mixtape just MIGHT be my favorite track but it took a while to grow on me. It’s called “Red Stars” and it is Trav rapping from the perspective of Jason Todd. Now if you know the story of how Jason Todd “died” and ended up becoming “Red Hood”, it is very dark. That is actually one of my favorite Batman storylines because it showed how vulnerable Jason Todd was and how ruthless the Joker as a character is. It also introduced my second favorite Robin in Dick Grayson, but that’s for another time. Trav showed a lot of emotion, a menacing kind of emotion, in the beat which matched his flow perfectly. I felt for Jason and was like “damn, if Jason Todd was real...he might actually feel like this”. I won’t put any lines from that song in here because I really want you all to listen to it and interpret it for yourselves then tell me what you think.

The “ComixTape Vol. 1” by Trav B. Ryan, to me, is a must listen! Especially if you like Rap and Superheroes, but if you just like one or the other you won’t be disappointed either. A mixtape just under 20 minutes with nice flows, good bass bumping beats and easter eggs all throughout is something that will keep you entertained the whole way through. But this is not his only work. On his youtube channel that I mentioned before above, he has waaayyy more of these raps in different videos. From what I have seen, he has songs from the perspectives of characters such as Damien Wayne (my favorite Robin), Alfred, Hulk, Iron Man….list just goes on and on. My biggest question is... WHERE IS VOL. 2?! I’m just patiently waiting for more tracks on an actual mixtape with more characters, maybe a bit longer and maybe throw in a battle or two on there. Feel free to listen to all his content, the mixtape is on all the music streaming sites such as Apple Music, Spotify and Google Music. Tell me your opinions down below in the comment section.

Final Review Score: 8/10

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