The much awaited sequel to the “Revenge of the Dreamers” from the Dreamville team finally dropped on December 8th, featuring J. Cole, Omen, Bas & Cozz along with two newly signed artists, Lute and Ari Lennox.

The new compilation is made up of nine tracks of which the only non-Dreamville features are Donnie Trumpet from Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment who released their album “Surf” early in 2015, which featured Cole on the track “Warm Enough”, along with Correy C. who released his debut EP in October.

The prevalent theme throughout the album is the idea of dealing with the influence that a rapper has, with Cole on Folgers Crystals saying, “Now I could be the change that I wanna see/I can heal the world for real if a nigga speaking honestly” to celebrating success in the rap industry as Bas rhymes in Night Job, “Cause lately my my lifestyle’s like dynamite/ I’ma go lights out like dynamite”. The Dreamville crew is having their spot in the limelight because of J. Cole, who has built up a base for his fellow crew members with the first Revenge of the Dreamers, which has since seen Bas release “Last Winter”, Cozz with “Cozz & Effect”, and Omen this year with “Elephant Eyes”.

The album also has material that deals with the trials and tribulations that come with being a black man in modern-day America, as Mr. Elephant Eyes discusses on Caged Bird, “I started as a king, turned to a slave, put us in our chains/we was forced to entertain, thinking bout the present day I’m living off the stage/wonder if a nigga ever get up out this cage”. The song is said to be inspired by the autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, written by the poet Maya Angelou. In the book, it describes her early years as an African-American as her personality as a strong character and her love of literature helped her to overcome the prevalent problems occurring in the time period such as racism and trauma amongst others. Throughout the course of the book, she transforms from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a strong woman capable of responding to prejudice and injustice in her world – similarly, the song discusses the problems that the average black person has to go through and even when they have managed to escape the cage, they end up back inside but this time with a stronger sense of character and responsibility.

The more playful songs on this project are Backseat by Ari Lennox ft. Cozz produced by DJ Grumble while having an old-school feel, as you can take from the lyrics, is about backseat sex in a car – along with Tabs by Cozz featuring Bas, with the hook being “I don’t keep tabs on these bitches / I close the tab on these bitches / Won’t give no cash to these bitches / I’ll leave yo ass in the parking lot/Won’t call a cab for these bitches”. Cozz has been improving his craft since his debut “Cozz & Effect” which, in my opinion, should have been bigger news.

The production throughout this project is very strong, with Cole continuing to prove his skills as a very talented producer, along with Cedric Brown, and KQuick, as well as the late J. Dilla’s “In Space” instrumental being used on Lute’s “Still Slummin'”. ROTD2 demonstrates the different capabilities of each rapper and while I was hoping there would be a lot of Cole when I heard this would be dropping, I’m glad with what I got. Although this was more of a playful project, showing that the Dreamville collective are still very active and also showing off their new lineup, I expected slightly more, length-wise and material wise – otherwise, can’t complain much.

I would give this a 8/10. The next couple of albums coming out in the near future include Boss J. Cole’s rumoured collaboration album with Kendrick Lamar coming to fruition, Bas’ “Too High to Riot”, Cozz with “Nothing Personal” and newcomer Lute with “West1996 pt.2”. The Dreamville crew is one of my favourite rap groups, as well as TDE, and I’m hoping that they each release an album in 2016, and are hopefully featured of the possible collaboration album by J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar in February.