Joe Budden - Ordinary Love Shit pt.1 & 2

Download: Ordinary Love Shit pt.1 & 2

Towards the end of last year Joe Budden put out Ordinary Love Shit Pt.1 via twitter, before following it up with Part 2 a month or so later. As the title suggests, both tracks deal with love, but more specifically the relationships that develop from it. And it’s a mature look at these relationships; there’s little mention of infatuation or lust but instead the track focuses on the more developed aspects and in a little over 7 minutes Joey covers issues ranging from trust to cheating, communication, independence and even parenting, covering both his past and present experiences and even speculating a little on the future.

With this track, Budden, as he always does, adds a little bit of reality to Hip-Hop and in the process makes a track immediately relatable through his sincerity, honesty and the great observations he makes drawing on past experience. Such an example is when he touches on the drama he’s had with his son and how it affects his outlook on the possibility of parenting in the future. This is what relationship tracks should be like. This is how you really utilise the format of the genre and use it as a platform to explore an issue.

‘Now listen I could give a fuck bout how them other n-ggas treated you
Your ass was that perfect they would be with you’

‘I’ll stop lying to you once you start believing me’

Now, no tracks perfect, and Ordinary Love Shit has a few minor hiccups. The standard falls off a little towards the end of Part 1 and Part 2, in general, isn’t quite as good as its predecessor. Both beats – it switches up part way into the second track – are also a little underwhelming. In the end, though, these are pretty minor issues in an otherwise superb track.

As is the norm for a Budden track, there’s way too many nice lines to quote them all; a problem that’s all too rare to encounter nowadays. Rather than fill this post up with lyrics I’ll just drop a couple more nice lines:

‘Born to be a leader but a tough act to follow’

‘I learned it’s hard to get justice when you try and be civil’

‘Before you send your shots, just check my return policy’

As Joey himself says: 

‘Do you want a pretty lie or the ugly truth?’

‘You want honesty or rather shit be sugar coated’,

and while in the context of the track it refers to a relationship it also applies to how most other artists themselves represent 'love' in tracks, all pretty little lies and sugar coated nonsense.

9/10

Lyrics

Note: I was originally going to wait until Joey announced that the ‘series’ of tracks was ended before reviewing them but the fact he remains ambiguous on the topic when it’s brought up in twitter combined with my impatience meant I decided to just review them now. If any further installments are released I’ll review them when they become available.