Kwing's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Greasy Shakedown]

Man this is good. Sounds a bit like a War-Spawn beat. Cutting the treble on the drums was a great move, as it makes the whole thing much sludgier and goes with the melancholy of the cello.

[the next tiesto]

I've come to associate you with fast, upbeat tunes, but the intro to this track is surprisingly subtle, and I'm really impressed you were able to do that with default samples, too. Sounds almost like something out of a Worms game.

bryce responds:

not sure what gave you that idea, just listen to my 'lape polaris' (418155) or 'circular shift left' (815778), both got kinda subtly intros. :)

[He Is Risen (Libby Shimmz Remix)]

What to say about this? The beat choice is really great - quite different from the first verse I heard (presumably with the original beat) and yet Ogle's fast-paced delivery seems to work with the beat despite them being quite different.

The acapella itself is strong. The flow is varied and creative, the rhyme schemes are intricate, and Hamsa actually does triplets RIGHT - incorporating them sporadically without allowing them to turn the whole track into stock trap rapper flow. At a few points the fast flow outpaces the beat and becomes slightly off-tempo, but it's not enough to seriously impact the song.

The scratching starting at 2:30 is such a breath of fresh air. That said, with the repetition and catchiness of the line, it might have made sense to mix it in somewhere in the middle of the song too (1/3 to 1/2 of the way through the track) to make the whole track feel a little more cohesive.

Aside from a few nitpicks (occasionally off-beat, AutoTune at 1:20 is somewhat jarring) this is really fantastic.

Libby-Shimmz responds:

The acapella was hard to beatmatch. That's something I'm not really adept at yet.

That AutoTune was from Hamsa. I was going to ask him why it was there, but it's probably a stylistic choice on his part, so I relented.

[Lost Without You]

Such an authentic 90s sound here. You call this lofi, but it shares very little in common with the "slow it down, mute the highs and add static" trend of modern lofi. Great bass, very catchy.

[-mao- 'I Dunno' prod by BoJangles]

Your flow has always sounded super weird to me, but you sound surprisingly comfortable here. Whether intentional or not, there are a lot of oldschool Korn vibes going on here.

Some nitpicks - you mumble a little on the bridge, and when you use multisyllable rhymes you sometimes rhyme them with a different rhythm, which is a little jarring and keeps the line from making intuitive sense to the listener.

MaoDaMighty responds:

Much appreciated feedback Kev. I have been consciously trying to work on relaxing my flow so I'm glad you noticed.

[Gone I]

I'm really impressed by how smooth you sound here. You sound so much more comfortable than you have on your older tracks. I would suggest switching up the inflection on repeated phrases - repetitions of "and then she was gone" sound kind of robotic and monotone. There are a few things you could do to fix that. The first thing that comes to mind is saying it monotone three times, then changing pitch on the fourth repetition.

supafreshpjs responds:

Thanks I’ll definitely try that and see what else I can do for the track. I swear it’s the new set up that makes it all sound better and smoother, and I guess I’m learning more about mixing still slowly as I go. :) thank you for the review big dog.

[Harder Than Ever feat. MadFlex]

Forgot how much energy was in this song. A few metaphors feel kind of basic, but the overall production value and flow are really the dominant factor here. Both of you fit the beat perfectly.

[Monica]

It's uncanny how much this sounds like Viper the Rapper. The difference being that this is actually decent as far as that style is concerned (probably because unlike him, you aren't stretching yourself thin by putting out an entire album EVERY DAY.) Maybe you should start making vaporwave from now on, because you really do have the voice for it.

I think the biggest problem with the song is its length. Since the song is really just there to carry one joke, having the joke last almost four minutes gets old (two minutes would have been more appropriate, and comedic rappers like Pink Guy realize this all too well.) Moreover, since your greatest strength (multis) gets shoved under the rug for the sake of carrying one rhyme scheme all the way through, the joke only gets old that much faster because there isn't any substance or even a reprieve from the central theme.

Teqneek responds:

I was originally going to keep this to 2.5 minutes in length, but it stopped the "story" dead in its tracks.

Really though, how many popular 4 minute songs are there where people just repeat the same "I got money", "I got bitches" lines over and over? Plenty. At least this one has a premise, humor, and cleverness added added.

The final 2 verses are the bread and butter of this song, and in order to get to those, it needed the set up.

Anyway, this shit is at least 5x better than you two reviewers have given it credit for.

[NGHH'11 - Pigpen Vs Nimbus]

Seven years later this battle is still great. PiGPEN came a little weak with his first round but every other round is a pretty vicious back and forth with some great rebuttals. A few weaknesses here and there - Nimbus doubles his vocals too much, PiG's flow slips a couple times here and there.

Overall I give it to Nimbus since PiGPEN had a weak first. Nimbus' first did have a lot of name disses, but he started the round with some strong rebuttals. Both guys showed up though.

[FastCar/NeverChange]

Can't believe I haven't reviewed this yet, since this is hands down one of my favorites. Not even sure what to say at this point - great voice, great singing, great flow, internal rhymes for days.

It's time to make some new music, my dude.