If green means go, red means stop, what do you do when you see the bluelight?   B. Keyes, by way of Hagerstown Maryland, teamed up with DTP (Ludacris’s Disturbing Tha Peace)  Dj’s , Dj Schemes and Top Floor Studios to show you just what happens when he sees that bluelight, releasing his follow up to the EP B.Keyes,  Bluelight mixtape. With its range of subject matter ranging from; snake- in-the grass friends, champagne spilling and freshly rolled kush, to doing everything in his power to support his son, the Bluelight mixtape manages to give you a little bit of everything.  With his street style and aggressive flow, he lets the people know that any success he has obtained has been earned, and has not been an easy road.  With every grind, comes a time you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor and on the Bluelight mixtape Keyes does that while narrating his trials, tribulations and the events that make him the mc he is today.

The 15 track tape starts off with a song called “Mesmerized”, a tribute to the “Bluelight”.  Almost like he is talking about a bad chick, Keyes talks about arriving to the studios, feeling real nice off a recently smoked blunt and seeing the booth, mic, and other various studio equipment giving him that feeling that he’s ready to go in.  On “Habit” Keyes raps about his by-any-means-necessary mindset in his quest to get his money right.  Everybody has their periods when they’re down bad, but it’s the way you bounce back that enables one to call himself a hustler.  Any real dude doesn’t stay down long and Keyes reiterates this.  “Bills on the table, bills on the floor” (not money but actual bills that need paid) an excerpt from the hook, is a situation everybody has felt and been through.  Anybody that has kids can tell you the motivation and fifth gear that gives you to make your ends meet, so “Habit” not only functions as a banger, but as a motivational hustler’s anthem as well.  The interlude “Limelight Too” is a hard hitting triumphant but street sounding song where Keyes talks about his champagne lifestyle and grind to get there.  Although, Keyes obviously stopped to enjoy the result of his long grind on this one, he says “say a nigga livin good, say I’m livin alright”, showing he has only stopped for a Gatorade break and his grind is nowhere near over.  He also mentioned while other dudes were worried about grabbing the hottest jerseys (when they were hot) and getting the latest sneaks, he was stacking his money in preparation for his long flight to “mars” and the stars above reaching his stardom.  Although this was just basically a snippet, this was one of my favorites from the tape.  “Lovers, Friends, Enemies” was another jam I liked because I can definitely relate to the concept of the song.   Most people at one point in their life have had a girl that was just a friend and later became more, only to eventually not work and forever damage the friendship, and almost everybody can relate to either friends or family, doing some snake type grimey -like things to them becoming almost an enemy. This track perfectly illustrates both scenarios and you have to admire the realness and the sincerity the track however, I wasn’t really a big fan of the hook.  It was on topic and effective in getting the point across, but lacked creativity and sounded sloppy at times.  “Nothing 2 Lose” featuring Yng Mak,( an up and coming Pittsburgh artist), is a dark feeling, bass/snare driven song with a grimey feel sure to catch the ear of any street cat.  With a braggadocios hook, Keyes and Yng Mak tag team the track not holding any punches.  Yng  Mak definitely made the most of his feature displaying his lyrical prowess, showcasing more than a couple nice punchlines; “ know I’m nice but talk down but they got they reasons, they hate me like Lebron when he go to Cleveland, sucka niggas booin real niggas screamin, the game looking sloppy imma do the cleanin”. (Yng Mak did his thing on this one)

In my opinion, the mixtape was mediocre to me, sounding very amateurish to me at points.  On songs like” Rise Above”, the beat was nice and I started off bobbing my head, only to be deaded by the corny and unprofessional hook.  I feel like the hook should have been spaced out on more vocal tracks so the vocals didn’t sound so rushed giving it its “amateurish” sound, and there’s a part of the song (comes in at 0:40) where he attempted to rhyme the word “options” with the word “obstacles” .  He tried to rush “obstacles” in attempt to fit it in with the flow of the syllables and just…no.  Should have just used another word or phrase to capture what he was trying to say.  It may sound petty, but it’s the little things that make great mc’s. Hey, the great mc’s don’t do it, and the goal is to be great right?  I also thought it was just uncreative and wack (for lack of a better word) to call two tracks on the same cd basically the same thing “ High” and “Super High”, both with the same feature by Jc of the Finest on the hook and both songs being relatively about the same thing.  Besides a few other things that kind of rubbed me the wrong way along with the tape being “Soundclick.com” heavy (the beat production), the tape was cool.  With some refinement and minor brush-ups this dude will be tight. 2.5/5

Bluelight | DOWNLOAD