Who doesn’t love a great collab record? There’s something great about two or more of your favorite artists collaborating on a track to display their levels of talent together. One might even say some of the greatest tracks ever created were the result of collabs.
JAY Z and Biggie teaming up to do “Brooklyn’s Finest” on Jay’s Reasonable Doubt album was magical. That was a record that felt necessary for Hip Hop at the time of its release. Two of Brooklyn’s finest emcees, no pun intended, teaming up to create a masterpiece of a track that was a factor in Reasonable Doubt being viewed as the classic album it is to this day.
Depending on who the artists are, a good collaboration can really help push an album. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional collab—the key word here being “occasional.” The trouble with an album that has too many collaborations is the artist won’t necessarily have the chance to showcase the full extent of their talents. This could also hinder artist development. The features should be placed on an album as an addition to make the project more complete, not as a crutch to lean on.
There are certain artists such as J. Cole (2014 Forest Hills Drive) who have gone platinum with zero features and minimal assistance overall. That is a feat that deserves to be applauded. It’s not every day that we get an album where the artist in question carries almost all of the weight of their album on their shoulders.
There’s nothing wrong with features here and there, but a solo album is ultimately supposed to be a display of an artist’s full arsenal of musical capabilities and to count on features to carry the weight of a project only cheats the artist out of achieving the growth and development they need to become the best, most well rounded artist they can be.
