Review: Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon Is a Half-Baked Epitaph

Pop Smoke, born Bashar Jackson, emerged as part of a crop of young rappers who took the morbid bluntness of drill, a subgenre of trap music that originated in Chicago’s South Side in the early 2010s, and adapted it to the ethos of New York City street life. In the Brooklyn rapper’s case, the translation was shrewd, utilizing the help of East London producer 808Melo, who, along with Rico Beats, oversaw the entirety of Pop Smoke’s 2019 mixtape Meet the Woo, creating a sound that was lively, booming, and faithful to Jackson’s origins while cloaking his gang-life testimonials in a new stylistic mode.

When Jackson was shot and murdered in Los Angeles in a home invasion earlier this year, he’d just released his second mixtape, Meet the Woo 2, and was in the process of recording his studio debut, now posthumously released under the title Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon. Unfortunately, yet all too predictably, the album has the feel of a B-sides collection culled together as a cash-in on his death. It attempts to expand Pop Smoke’s sound and ambitions, but without him around to shape and hone the work, his collaborators struggle to assemble something more than a pale reflection of what might have been.

Where Pop Smoke’s mixtape raps were notable for their conviction of delivery and tightly wound compression, here he sounds fainter and less engaged. His verses on “Aim for the Moon” and “Creature” don’t have the same punchy impact. In his best moments, Pop Smoke was able to channel his untamed aggression into repetitive, elemental lyrics that were colored by his force of personality (such as “Dior,” which has been tacked on to all three of his releases, including this one). Though not as adept at complex wordplay, his appeal was akin to the tough-talking, chest-puffing brio of DaBaby, who’s featured on “For the Night.”

Along with a live-wire masculinity, the album also contains the ill-advised forays into R&B found on DaBaby’s Blame It on Baby. Ladled with plenty of Auto-Tune, neither rapper has a compelling singing voice, and yet multiple songs on this album attempt to position Pop Smoke as a softer-spoken purveyor of love songs. “Something Special” and “What You Know Bout Love” sample Fabolous and Tamia’s “Into You” and Ginuwine’s “Differences,” respectively, marking the farthest the rapper has strayed from his patented drill and trap origins, but they’re dreary and tepid rather than exciting sonic departures. When he ad-libs, “Oh, you ain’t know I could sing?,” at the beginning of “Mood Swings,” it comes across as empty boast.

Even the tracks that stick to Pop Smoke’s established drill mode don’t have the inventiveness and coiled energy of his mixtape highlights. Half of what makes a song like “Welcome to the Party” so enjoyable is its menacing yet gleeful production, all warped violin loops and careening, demented bass. Comparable tracks on Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon, such as “Gangstas” and “West Coast Shit,” trade these inspired choices for a minimalist piano and snare combination. The production feels mournful rather than charged, which makes sense given the turn of events but doesn’t square with the late artist’s strengths.

A handful of moments here make good on Pop Smoke’s promise. “Got It on Me” and “44 BullDog” find him doggedly racing against their beats, and there are brief instances where the rapper’s glib sense of humor and confidence invest lines like “I need your number and that’s that” and “I ain’t with the talk or the chit chat” with a hoarse individuality. But on the whole, in broadening his music’s scope, those responsible for piecing together Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon have lost sight of the local specificity, quirky charisma, and energy that made a name for Pop Smoke in the first place.