This most recent single by Atlanta rapper V.I.C. is awash in mediocrity and incoherent bantering. After listening to his track ‘Say Bow’, I reached one of two conclusions. First, young hip-hop artists under contracts with major record labels are given no creative input in their music, meaning the content of the music is left in the producer’s hands. Second, V.I.C. lacks the creativity to produce meaningful music, which I believe is true.

I had high hopes for V.I.C., a contemporary of Soulja Boy. In 2008, Soulja produced his first single ‘Get Silly,’ which reached 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. This early success was clearly because of Soulja Boy’s endorsement. However, a year has passed and V.I.C. was dropped from Warner Bros. Records. This year, he switched to Jive Records. Rumor has it that he was dropped because ‘Say Bow’ failed to chart.

The failure of this single is not due to a deficiency in production value, but rather that the single is overproduced. There are multiple vocal tracks on the recording, which would be fine if V.I.C. were singing harmonies, which he is not. These multiple tracks dismember the song, leaving the listener confused as to what is actually being said. Although I didn’t bother to look up the lyrics to ‘Say Bow,’ I could clearly hear, “I shout out to the players in the back”. I regrettably wondered, how many times have I heard this same phrase in a song before?

Another problem I had with the single is the beat itself, which presents the listener with nothing catchy or groundbreaking. It is sedentary and reeks of mass produced garbage. Without being too hard on the producer, Mr. Hanky, but it seems he wasn’t putting his heart into working with V.I.C., which is evident in the musical content. The drums are overpowered by a driving bass line, which appears to be the most enduring and dominant element in the song. The drum track sounds similar to the beat on Soulja Boy’s hit ‘Crank That’. With these similarities in mind, I feel that V.I.C. is relying on Soulja Boy’s success.

While ‘Say Bow’ may sit anonymously among the casual listener’s record collection, it won’t in mine. This song is a trash, signifying an appalling laziness on the part of V.I.C. Instead of constructing a song with a political or philosophical message, he chose to write ‘Say Bow’, a statement about the rapper’s own inflated ego. It is a testament to the oversaturated state of rap music. The genre, which was once cutting edge and intelligent, has reduced itself to generating meaningless dribble. You should avoid this single and instead invest the discography of “A Tribe Called Quest.”