Joey B’s Lava Feels: Compilation Review

Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Massa Red, Dear Music fan, and lover – This is Cyan Music; do take a seat, and breathe…

We’re here with the review vibes on our side and today we take a look at Joey B’s ‘Lava Feels’ record that came out this month. Darryl Paa Kwesi Bannerman-Martin, icon, fashionista, model, singer, songwriter, and rapper has been a phenomenon since his Tonga single hit the streets. He has indeed built a reputation for himself in the industry and he’s pushed music to far heights with his experimental approach to it. Joey is an influencer and it shows because a lot of new artists with similar styles have been able to step into the limelight because of what he’s been able to achieve. Like every artist, he has his scars from battling the music scene here but it hasn’t stopped him at all. Joey’s experimental nature is what has pushed him to be where he is. Always looking to try something new and flawlessly execute it after many errors. He’s come a long way and we give him props for that. Lava Feels is a 9 track album with a run time reaching 25 minutes. It features popular artists like Stonebwoy, M3nsa, Ko-Jo Cue, Pappy Kojo, E.L, Bosom P-Yung, RJZ, Odunsi, and Sauti. Quite the list for dope guest artists. Well, let’s get into it and see what we have here.  

Personal sentiments, Content and Lyricism, Vocals and Production in no Particular order…

Before anything, we have to address the album art because.. we don’t know what was happening. It looked more like a PlayStation 1 action game rather than an album art. Red had this to say:

Sigh, to begin with, I’m very disappointed in Joey for coming out with such lazy work with regards to his cover art for this project. Little or no at effort at all was put into it.
It looks like the designer ripped a cool picture of lava and found a cool font and just put them
together. Well, to give him the benefit of the doubt I guess this quality of cover art was produced
because of the type of project Joey put out, it is just a compilation. But regardless a little effort
could have been put into producing cool cover art for the project

– Massa Red on the Cover Art of Lava Feels

The album starts with the album title, ‘Lava Feels’. The sound Joey B has adopted and has been experimenting with is growing with time and this album feels like something he’s using to show us how much progress he’s made. Lava feels provides this smooth, easy on the ears sounding instrumental with a very laid back delivery from the artist. You can tell he’s in his zone with this record and it’s a classic opener for the album. Then comes ‘La Bamba’. Honestly sick of hearing lines about time, ‘Rolex’, and ‘Hublot’. It’s getting really old. This song is also a very laid back record. Sark’s delivery was okay. No weird lines but no ‘wow’ factor about it. ‘Silicon Valley’ with P-Yung. I don’t care what anyone says, that hook was trash. It was clumsy, goofy, and lazy to be honest. There was so much more that could have been done and the concept could have been worked on to make it’s delivery better. And the ending to the song was, well, it was Joey B. Dunno what to say about it. ‘Paa Kwesi’ features RJZ of La Meme Gang fame and Joey B starts the song paying respects to legend Daddy Lumba, and you can detect the Lumba feel and sound in the record with the approach to the vocals and lyrics. The hook is pretty catchy as well. A good record overall. ‘‘Over You’ was also a decent record. ‘Affection’ sees Stonebwoy brings a livelier vibe to the record as the previous ones have followed a certain pattern so far. Stonebwoy did justice to his feature and it’s an enjoyable song. Now ‘Far Away’. That record will probably not get the props it deserves. 

Blue had this to say about that particular record:

‘Mensah had the best verse on the album. Period.’ 

The song in itself is perfect, vocally, sonically and it does justice enough to prove Joey’s mettle as a top artist. Because the song doesn’t even sound Ghanaian, and that’s how fresh the sound is. This song undoubtedly opened up the path for ‘Hard Knocks’ with Ko-Jo Cue to settle into the album. Without the other, just one of the tracks would have felt out of place a bit. Joey’s delivery on this record too was flawless and the feature only served to complement a masterpiece. The vocals on this record were also good. The outro to this album was classic and pretty upbeat. All artists delivered the goods and signed off on the album decently. The instrumental was unconventional but it still worked out in the end and that’s what matters. 

Concluding… 

This compilation had its flaws but still came out okay with a lot of very very classic records, a few hitches here and there but all in all an interesting record from Joey B.

The Signature Sign Off…

Big thanks to Mr. Blue and Massa Red for their input and general insight and much appreciation to you, our reader. What do you think of the album? What do you think of this review? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts. This has been Cyan Music, Music Review corner.