Pop Smoke – Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon (Deluxe)
At its original 19-track length, Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon was a brawny last hurrah for Brooklyn MC Pop Smoke. The addition of 15 unreleased songs for the deluxe version turns the official debut of a tragically murdered star into a comprehensive archive of unrealised potential. Pop Smoke’s range expands just a little bit further here, the additions finding him dabbling in Afrobeats (“Tsunami”), downtempo R&B (“Backseat”) and spacey trap (“Be Clearr”). The expanded edition also doubles the original’s guest list, adding marquee names like Jamie Foxx, Gunna, Young Thug, Davido, Burna Boy and A Boogie wit da Hoodie. There are also verses from Brooklyn MCs and long-time Pop Smoke affiliates Fivio Foreign, DAFI WOO and Dread Woo. If there is a single song on Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon (Deluxe) that comes off as more disturbing than Pop Smoke could have foreseen, it is “Hotel Lobby”, where he remarks, “I got a feeling n****s tryna line me.”