“The Stoned Immaculate” by Curren$y

From working with Lil Wayne in the earlier stages of Young Money to establishing his own label Jet Life, Louisiana MC Curren$y recently released his eighth studio album The Stoned Immaculate. Released June 5, 2012 on Warner Bros. Record, this album is labeled as Curren$y’s first “major” studio album. Nevertheless, Curren$y uses his previous connections from his mixtape days and recruited a cast of artists. The album features fellow MCs Wale, Young Jeezy, 2Chainz, Big K.R.I.T., and long-time collaborator Wiz Khalifa, while the production is handled by The Neptunes, J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Daz Dillnger, and others. The album was released in two different forms, Regular and Deluxe, with the Special Edition Deluxe version (featuring 3 bonus tracks) exclusively available online via iTunes.

The Stoned Immaculate ranks as Curren$y’s highest charting album to date. Debuting at #8 on the U.S Billboard 200 chart with first week sales of 36.1k, it reached #2 on the top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums as well. Currency began recording the album in 2011 and stated that it was more complicated to record than his previous works. Unlike other records Curren$y wasn’t able to record this album in a few days similar to the way Weekend at Bernie’s was handled. During an interview with HipHopDX, he stated that the recording and writing process for his earlier works only took a few days; “I did Weekend at Burnie’s in Miami with Monsta Beatz in two days. With this one I moved around.”

The album sports “What It Look Like” featuring Wale as its lead single. The song is produced by Bink a Grammy-winning hip hop producer, best know for his works with Roc-A-Fella Records, contains prominent drum loop.

The song “Fast Cars, Faster Women” featuring Daz was released along with a pre-order of the album on Curren$y’s official website on 4/20. The single serves as a street single for the album and is the collaboration Curren$y enjoyed the most. As for working with legendary West Coast MC & Producer Daz Dillinger, Curren$y explained to Hiphopdx.com, “I tried to find Daz a few times on Twitter but that didn’t really work out. One time in a meeting with Warner [Bros. Records] I brought up his name and asked them to try find Daz for me. A couple days after the meeting I got his e-mail and we smoked, burned it down, made sure everything was cool and did some work.”

The official second single “Jet Life” (featuring Wiz Khalifa & Big K.R.I.T.) with production by Big K.R.I.T. and was released via Youtube May 28th, 2012. Three standout songs where Curren$y appears by himself are “Showroom”, “Chandelier”, and “Privacy Glass”. The album brings an appreciated blend of a mainstream style but still contains Curren$y classic Louisiana twang that his fans are use to.

By Mike Aaron