Naturally nobody cares about it, but it’s arguably the quintessential Southern rap album of 2009. Jordan Sargent: Gorilla Zoe’s Don’t Feed Da Animals is an album full of half-assed raps and metallic-heart Autotune warbles over tinny, cheap-as-hell synth beats. I’m far from an Autotune autohater – and indeed Zoe uses it to terrific, woozy effect on “Dope Boy” – but his cack-handed attempt to use it to signify an ~emo moment~ is embarrassing.

You wouldn’t know it from the spectacularly bad “Echo”, though. It’s not quite as amazing as that song, but it’s a fine use of Autotune and a very pleasing melody.Īlex Macpherson: Gorilla Zoe’s Don’t Feed Da Animals album is pretty good – hooky ear candy which holds few surprises but which is consistently enjoyable. Vastly different from the macho posturing that starts off this Atlantan’s second album, “Echo” reminds me of nothing so much as Enrique Iglesias’s “Do You Know (The Ping Pong Song)?” in its cheerful commitment to cheese. Hillary Brown: Um, I’ve listened to this 15 times in a row, and I’m not tired of it yet. Michaelangelo Matos: I like how straightforward the lyrics are on this: at first I thought it was just 808s and Heartbreak redux, but while Zoe’s persona here may have fewer angles than Kanye’s, I know which one I prefer relating to. Tom Ewing: Robot gorillas used to feature weirdly regularly in very old school 2000AD stories, though I don’t remember any rapping over what sounds like old China Crisis chord changes: who says there’s no innovation left? There’s an increasing whiff of pointlessness about all this voco-rap stuff, though, as is par for the course, “Echo” is jolly pleasant, and nobody ever went broke playing the gentle giant card. Pharrell WilliamsĪpparently there’s a version with Diddy on it.

Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment.

Email (song suggestions/writer enquiries).

Echo gorilla zoe