Lyrical Lemonade – All Is Yellow (Album Review)

Lyrical Lemonade, a Chicago video production brand created and headed in 2013 by Cole Bennett, has transcended beyond simply creating music videos and has become a multi-media company striving to create innovative and creative content. Over the years, Lyrical Lemonade has worked with artists including Ski Mask the Slump God, Lil Tecca, Juice WRLD, Eminem, and J. Cole, surpassing over 11 billion views on YouTube collectively. In an attempt to break into the music industry himself, Cole Bennett announced through a series of tweets in February 2022 that Lyrical Lemonade gearing up to release a compilation studio album. Delayed from its slated 2023 summer release, All Is Yellow was officially released in January 2024, debuting at #43 on the Billboard 200 on the week of February 10, 2024.

With Cole stated the album intended to pair artists together that fans wouldn’t typically expect to see collaborate and to create a music video for every song within the album (14 songs), Lyrical Lemonade had ambitious dreams for their debut studio album. Utilizing the relationships Cole garnered over the years through his music video production, Cole brings together 35 artists on the album of various genres such as Hip-Hop, Soul, Alt-Pop, UK Hip Hop, and Pop Rap. Releasing the first single of the album Doomsday featuring Juice WRLD and Cordae, Cole stated through tweets that the track contained a never-before-heard song from the late Juice WRLD that Cordae and Juice had recorded before Juice WRLD’s untimely death. Sampling and chopping the instrumental from Eminem’s Dr. Dre produced track Role Model, Juice WRLD and Cordae offer a light, classic feeling hip-hop back-and-forth track full of hard deliveries, witty lyricism, and personality. As the best of the four singles to be released, Doomsday also earns the spot for the best track on the entire album with the rest of the features/singles never exceeding the magic captured here.

With the release of Doomsday being met with a fairly warm and warranted reception for the track and the music video itself, the buzz surrounding the album’s release began to build leading up to the album’s second single, Guitar In My Room featuring Lil Dirk and Kid Cudi. Accompanied by light guitar strings, trap, and synth, the song finds Lil Dirk offering a solid vocal performance about wanting to be accepted and his girl seeing her true value with a just fine verse from Kid Cudi. A step down in quality from the overall success of Doomsday, Guitar In My Room was a bit boring, not as engaging, nor as interesting of a collaboration as Cordae and Juice WRLD yet continued the enjoyable trend of pairing unsuspecting artists together.

Several months later, the third single Hello There featuring Lil Tracy, Corbin, and Black Kray was released, offering a different sound and tone compared to the previous two releases. Interpolating lyrics and vocal melodies from Blink 182’s I Miss You, the trio of features sing a medley of original and interpolated lyrics to a soft synth instrumental and interjections of drums and guitar. With vocals from Lil Tracy and Corbin that are just fine followed by a truly disappointing vocal performance from Black Kray whose vocals are heavily auto-tuned, the trio’s attempt to pay homage to the reignited interest in Blink 182’s song while making it relevantly their own is a complete miss in every regard. Easily the worst single to be released from the album, Hello There also reserves the spot for the worst song on the entire album as well, continuing the downward trend of quality in singles.

In the fourth and final single released a few weeks before the album, Stop Giving Me Advice featuring Jack Harlow and Dave, the duo rap about unsolicited advice they’ve gotten throughout their careers and how their accolade, lives, and perception indicate they don’t’ need it. With a pretty hard delivery from both artists and some laugh out loud lyricism with Dave over a melodic, rhythmic, and guitar touched Trap instrumental, Lyrical Lemonade’s single rollouts ended on a high note with this release. With a wide range of hits and misses for singles being met with mixed critical reception, the anticipation of Lyrical Lemonade’s album had tapered out a bit leading up to the time of its release.

All Is Yellow (14 tracks; 42min) started off its track list with Fly Away featuring Sheck Wes, Ski Mask the Slump God and JID, boasting a grandiose instrumental intro. With Sheck Wes on the chorus cushioning verses from Ski Mask and JID, the song ultimately feels a bit messy despite a solid delivery from Ski Mask and especially JID. The corny and nonsensical lyricism of Ski Mask paired with the witty and fun wordplay of JID just completely imbalances the track as JID outshines both artists exponentially in a track that not even he can save from being average. Following Guitar In My Room, the track transitions right into Say Ya Grace featuring Chief Keef and Lil Yachty. With Chief Keef co-producing the beat along with the Lyrical Lemonade production team, Say Ya Grace is more of a Trap/Cloud Rap release featuring a dynamic instrumental, lyrics about their wealth, crew, and talent along with a singing Lil Yachty feature, and a rapping/singing feature from Chief Keef.

Transitioning from one average track to another, the following song This My Life featuring Lil Tecca, The Kid LAROI, and Lil Skies offers a piano trap beat with lyrics about their lives, habit, fame, and trajectory to success. With fine vocals all around, the track itself feels hollow due to superficial lyricism, a superficial instrumental, and a middle of the road mixed track that’s trend is continued in the following song, First Night. Featuring Teezo Touchdown, Juicy J, Cochise, Denzel Curry, and Lil B with a co-production assist from Juicy J, the potential for success was high. Unfortunately, the track is completely disjointed with a piano intro finding Teezo singing lyrics for what feels like a different song followed by the Juicy J style (Memphis Rap) beat and delivery ending with a soft spoken Lil B outro, the song is truly all over the place. In back to back misses, Special featuring Latto, Swae Lee, and Aminé finds the trio performing about toxic exes and regret delivered over an acoustic guitar infused trap beat. With Latto shining the most in this track with a solid rap verse, Swae and Aminé offer a fairly lifeless verse that clash with each other’s styles in a way just as unpleasant as First Night.

With The Fish featuring $not and 6 Dogs offers a cloud rap style with lyricism about just enjoying life and going with the flow finding both artists singing throughout. Despite no cohesive feel to the lyrics, $not shines brightly over a whimsically dynamic beat for an average song that is a step up from the previous two tracks. With the palate cleanser of Doomsday breathing some much needed life into the tracklist, the album transitions back to disappointment with Doomsday, Pt. 2 featuring Eminem. Still utilizing the instrumental from Role Model by produced to sound different from Doomsday, Eminem offers a surprise diss track against Benzino, continuing the 20 year continuing feud between the two rappers. Despite a solid delivery from Eminem, the weak and cringe disses found in the lyricism calling out Coi Leray (Benzino’s daughter) paired with the out-of-place nature of a diss track, conflicting with the light and carefree feel of the album, makes for the inclusion of Doomsday, Pt. 2 to be as questionable as it is unnecessary.

Moving on to a slightly more quality track, Fallout featuring Gus Dapperton, Lil Yachty, and Joey Bada$$ finds the trio singing over a dreamy, light, and synth instrumental with lyricism about choosing their girl until the ends of the world. Despite being a bit all over the place with the artists somewhat clashing, the artists do well individually and offer a slightly above average track in the thus far medley of mediocrity. Continuing the trend of slightly above average, Equilibrium featuring BabyTron and G Herbo offers a light guitar intro with aesthetic nature sounds transitioning into droning synth as the duo raps about violence, threats, and riches for a cloud rap beat. With solid verses and delivers from both artists, this above-average track shines amidst the average and forgettable. After the disappointment of Hello There and before the solid closer Stop Giving Me Advice, Hummingbird featuring UMI, SahBabii, and Teezo Touchdown closes out the new releases from the album. Light guitar paired with soft and passionate vocals from UMI, the track contains lyrics about reconnecting with a past lover accompanied by a soft and solid verse from SahBabii and an oddly delivered verse from Teezo. With above-average production an vocals, Hummingbird offers listeners the last fresh track of the album as All Is Yellow closes with its final single, Stop Giving Me Advice.

Produced mostly by Lyrical Lemonade’s production team, owners of the samples used, and occasionally from the featured artist, it truly took a village to produce each track with several credits being associated to every single song. Similarly, the writing credits for each track always include the featured artist but, additionally, include similar members from Lyrical Lemonade’s team. While having a copious amount of producers/writers on each track isn’t necessarily a negative thing, in this case, it worked to the detriment of the album. Disjointed, forgettable, and incohesive feeling despite impressive assets from producers and writers, the ambition of the album exceeded its feasibility. While good in concept, All Is Yellow lacked in execution and direction.

Rating/Mediocre – All Is Yellow is an ambitious project with the intention of unifying artists who haven’t collaborated, creating a music video for each track, and releasing quality content. While the debut album succeeds in featuring artists together for sometimes the first time and releasing a music video for each track (An impressive feat) it fails in its most important function, quality. Despite the creative risks of featuring clashing genre artists together in tracks, a lot of the time, it leaves the album feeling disjointed and, when it is cohesive sounding, is ultimately forgettable and leaves no last impression. Despite some track highlights found in Doomsday and Stop Giving Me Advice, the rest of the album ranges from poor to mediocre, never reaching the potential and opportunity that these features together could reach.

[We rank singles, EPs, and albums on a scale of Poor, Mediocre, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding]