MIMS, Music Is My Savior

Shawn Mims makes the kind of hip-hop that causes purists to wring their hands and complain about how the genre is not what it was. His debut full-length offering is not aimed at those looking for an artist with anything to say. "I can sell a mill sayin' nothin' on a track," he brags, and often it seems as if that is exactly what he is doing. This doesn't matter, though, when he is so adept at producing slick club-bangers: generic, yes, but that is no cause for complaint when the genre is so good. The album is a conveyor belt of minimal 808 beeps and nagging hooks; things only start to drag when Mims tries to get serious. Luckily, that is not often. This Is Why I'm Hot, a song that has taken the US charts by storm this year, is a brilliantly silly novelty; Mims drops a sample of hip-hop from various US locales as he name-checks each area, before launching into an irresistibly dumb chorus: "I'm hot 'cos I'm fly! You ain't 'cos you not!" Elsewhere, there is the usual endearing braggadocio, though presumably no rapper has ever before described themselves as a "very big squirrel" as Mims does on Cop It.