Stoney

"On Post Malone's studio debut Stoney, the Dallas-raised musician with gold grills and braids does his best to sing-rap his way through an album's worth of woozy R&B-inflected hip-hop. As a fan of rap and its associated culture, Post delivers with moderate respect, careful not to toe the precarious line over which others like Iggy Azalea and Riff Raff have stumbled. Yet, there still seems to be something missing in the calculated white-guy-does-hip-hop formula ... It's competent and listenable, but many others have tread this same path already. Post Malone has a way to go before standing out with his own unique voice, but there are signs on Stoney that it could happen".

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"I have a perhaps wishfully optimistic hope that Stoney could mark the end of a specific kind of rap album: the spiffy cash-in after the viral hit or mixtape run. Post feels like the flimsiest artist yet to get this treatment, and he got such an extravagant treatment at that. With a recent era of mixtape rappers on the decline, along with the steady hemorrhaging of album sales and bigger names taking bigger risks, it seems as if this type of hollow release could soon become as anachronistic as an $18 CD is today".

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"Post is refreshing to hear, an emerging talent who can craft melodic hooks and infectious songs that stick. Especially on "No Option" and "Up There" that shows his potential as a powerhouse on the Billboard Hot 100 charts very soon. During his debut Stoney performance at his album release party in Irving Plaza in New York City was testament to his arrival, as many had hated him initially. If Rae Sremmurd and Gucci Mane's "Black Beatles" ruling No. 1 for the fifth week is evidence of Hip Hop's shape-shifting tastes, put Post Malone among the other new wave artists taking us into the future".

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