Leave the past in the past.
Survival sounds like 2005 rap resurrected, as both R&B artists and R&B elements find themselves heavily scattered across the album.
The result is much like rap in the early 2000s—when the R&B elements are complimentary, it works really well, but when the R&B elements are a crutch, the music sounds formulaic and mind-numbingly dull.
A prime example of Dave East making the most of R&B can be heard on the track "Daddy Knows" featuring Ash Leone.
The song starts with a touching conversation between East and his daughter. From there, East fully displays his strongest attribute by delivering his lyrics so smoothly that the entire 3-minute and 20-second tribute to his daughter sound like a candid conversation. Throughout that conversation, Leone operates like a prime Warriors Andrew Bogut, perfectly playing her easily overlooked role as the melodic feature.
If Ash Leone is Andrew Bogut on "Daddy Knows", Jacquees is Kevin Durant on "Alone", and the Jodeci "Feenin" sample is Klay Thompson.
Dave East, human jukebox Jacquees and a Jodeci sample are an unexpected big three, but the song was good enough for a Warriors dynasty analogy, so that should tell you how well they perform together.
However, the other R&B-infused songs on this album resemble a modern-day Golden State, leaving listeners to question how it got this bad.
"Penthouse" featuring J Black really makes the skip button earn its screen space, as the track sounds like an Empire reject.
Teyana Taylor and Dave East is a combination that looks great on paper, but the two refused to make use of their most marketable aspect—sex appeal. Instead, the song turns into one of the more forgettable on the album.
East surprisingly makes great duos with Gunna on "Every Day" and Lil Baby on "Night Shift", as the different deliveries contrast for a sound that grabs the listener's attention.
The back-to-back-to-back placement of "On My Way To School", "Seventeen" and "Mama I Made It" is the stride of the project with East operates without a feature to convey three different impactful stories.
The last significant takeaway from Survival is the difference in feature quality from rap legends. Nas proves every ounce of his legendary status on "Godfather 4", while E-40 delivers a verse so bad on "Devil Eyes" that I have to go through his discography and see why exactly people hold him up to such high regard.
Overall, Survival is about five tracks too long and a few R&B features too plentiful for anyone to come away from the album remembering the talent of Dave East. However, the talent still finds a way to shine despite the elements forcibly dragging it down, resulting in lukewarm for the project as a whole.
Final Score: 4/10
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