Last year, the Bay Area quartet of Young L, Stunna, Uno, and Lil B teamed up to form The Pack, making waves with their breakthrough debut single, “Vans”. Rather than living up to the typical rap stereotypes we’ve seen time and time again, The Pack came off a little bit hipper, rocking skateboard fashions mixed with bling, like four bastard sons of Pharrell. A more accurate comparison might have been what we like to call “the hyphy Souls of Mischief”, as this pack of fresh faced Bay Area teens brought back memories of the Hiero crew with their unique approach to making hip-hop. Backed by producer Young L, their debut EP, Skateboards To Scrapers was pleasing guilty pleasure, with easy to digest, spacey, bassy beats, and mind-numbingly dumb lyrical content.

The Pack returns just a year later with Based Boys, their official full-length debut, picking up where the EP left off, now housed under the Rawkus banner. Opening with “Rumble”, the crew gets off to a blase beginning, as they deliver half-assed lyrics over a lazy beat from Young L, utilizing a boxing ring bell; hardly “Mama Said Knock You Out”. You sort of know what to expect from these guys by now, as it shows on signature songs like “I Look Good” and “In My Car”, made up of hypnotic beats from Young L and audacious choruses that you can’t help but get hooked into.

But the problems with The Pack’s Based Boys are just as they are on the EP, as proven on songs like “My Girl Gotta Girl Too”. The beat, which rivals a half-million dollar track from The Neptunes, doesn’t fail sonically, but the group’s oft-lazy approach to lyrics kills the vibe at times (“I spit fire like a nigga named Mushu”; huh?!?!). There is also the severe problem of redundancy. Back to back we find each “In The Club”, “Club Stuntin’”, and “At The Club”, which are more or less different versions of the same song. The latter (“At The Club”, not to be confused with “In The Club”) does show off Young L’s skill as a beatsmith, a crisp Dilla-esque snare and infectious hook from a pilled-up Bay Area bopper.

Thankfully, the LP does have a few redeeming qualities to help give the pack some variation on their sound. Mr. Collipark chimes in for “The Milky Way”, a dope little extended sex/space metaphor, where one member promises “never been to space? I’ma take you there / don’t worry about your phone, it ain’t work up there”. The Replacement Killers drop in on the strangely titled “Rock N Roll”, which has more of a cool slow jam vibe, with it’s keenly freaked Freddie Jackson sample.

The LP ends with a series of bonus tracks, collecting the main singles from the EP – “Candy”, “I’m Shinin”, and “Vans”, each of which were the EP’s best cuts, but seem a little redudant for the early adopters. All in all, what Based Boys proves is that The Pack is good in small doses, like in the case of the Skateboard 2 Scrapers EP. That being said, while they do have a hard time crafting an entire LP, it’s only a matter of time before outside artists on a budget start tapping Young L for beats. – Pizzo