★★

1. Derty: 🤷‍♂️
2. Neptune: 👎🏻
3. Canon In D Remix: 🤷‍♂️
4. Clutter: 👎🏻
5. Super-Fun: 🤷‍♂️
6. The Rock Song Remixed: 🤷‍♂️
7. Snap: 👎🏻
8. The Sunfish Song: 👍🏻
9. Loui: 🤷‍♂️
10. Gold Spinners: 👍🏻
11. Remix to a Remix: 🤷‍♂️
12. Almost Undamaged: 🤷‍♂️
13. 56K (Rap): 👎🏻
14. Ain’t No Thang: 👎🏻

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Remember when I was talking about how I don’t like a lot of hip-hop, rap, or pop music because they don’t use real drums and/or their synth drums don’t sound like real drums? Ronald Jenkees’ self-titled album is chock full of exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. That and his bad mixing made this album really hard for me to enjoy.

In my notes on the very first track, I wrote “Sounds like the music that plays during the credits of a Jason Statham movie.” That rang true for the whole album. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. If it hadn’t been for the bad mixing and the fake-sounding drums, I think I might have liked quite a few of these songs.

Starting with Clutter, a lot of these tracks were just way too busy. I had a hard time keeping up with everything that was going on. Given that this guy is a self-produced YouTuber, I should give him some credit. His YouTube videos show him playing all this stuff on the fly, which makes him more talented than the EDM folks who stand on stage in weird costumes while their pre-populated playlists run their course.

In all, I think this dude could really benefit from three things:

1. A real drummer
2. An engineer to mix his tracks
3. Some Antoine de Saint-Exupery:
   

   Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.