''Float'' is the sixth solo studio album by American rapper

Styles P David R. Styles (born November 28, 1974), better known by his stage name Styles P (also known Mononymous person, mononymously as Styles), is an American rapper, best known as a member of East Coast hip hop group the Lox. Formed with fellow rappe ...

. It was released on April 16, 2013, through High Times Records. Recording sessions took place at Beast Music Studios in

New Rochelle New Rochelle ( ; in ) is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is a suburb of New York City, located approximately from Midtown Manhattan. In 2020, the city had a population of 79,726, making it the 7th-largest city and 2 ...

. Production was handled entirely by Scram Jones. It features

guest appearance The term guest appearance generally denotes the appearance of a guest in an artistic or pop-culture setting. The guests themselves (referred to as guest artists, featured artists, guest stars, or guest fighters, depending on context), are disting ...

s from Bullpen,

N.O.R.E. Victor James Santiago Jr. (born September 6, 1977), better known by his stage name, stage names N.O.R.E. (an acronym for Nigga On the Run Eating) and Noreaga, is an American rapper, singer and podcaster. Santiago first rose to prominence as one ...

Raekwon Corey Woods (born January 12, 1970), better known by his stage name Raekwon ( ), is an American rapper. He rose to prominence as a founding member of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, which achieved mainstream success following the release of the ...

and Scram Jones, as well as his The Lox groupmates

Jadakiss Jason Terrance Phillips (born May 27, 1975), better known by his stage name Jadakiss (, ), is an American rapper who began his career in the 1990s and formed the hip hop trio the Lox alongside Styles P and Sheek Louch in 1994. The group signed w ...

and Sheek Louch. The album debuted at number 124 on the ''Billboard'' 200, number 17 on the

Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a music chart published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine that ranks R&B and hip-hop albums based on sales in the United States and is compiled by Luminate. The chart debuted as Hot R&B LPs in the issue dated January 30, ...

, number 14 on the

Top Rap Albums Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a music chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine that ranks R&B and hip-hop albums based on sales in the United States and is compiled by Luminate. The chart debuted as Hot R&B LPs in the issue dated January 30, ...

and number 25 on the

Independent Albums The Independent Albums chart (previously titled Top Independent Albums) ranks the highest-selling independent music albums and extended plays (EPs) in the United States, as compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and published weekly by '' Billboard'' mag ...

, selling 3,900 copies in the United States in its first week of release.

Background

On February 25, 2013, Styles P announced he would be releasing ''Float'' an album entirely produced by Scram Jones on April 20, 2013. The release date was later pushed up to April 16, 2013. On March 5, 2013, the first single "Hater Love" featuring Sheek Louch was released for digital download. On April 4, 2013, the music video was released for "Hater Love" featuring Sheek Louch. On April 8, 2013, the song "Red Eye" featuring

was released. On April 20, 2013, the music video was released for "I Need Weed". On May 14, 2013, the music video was released for "Red Eye" featuring Jadakiss. In a May 2014, interview with '' XXL'',

spoke about the album, saying: "''Float'' was really just a fast project, man. I remember that Sheek was away and Kiss was away, and my engineer Cruz was away. Scram is my homie, I fuck with him, so I needed a studio I could work out of. He live a town away from me, about 15 or 20 minutes, so I would just hop in the ride, go to his place, smoke out, throw a beat on and the joint was done. One day I think we did four or five joints. Whenever I got there, we did joints. I got a lot of love for Scram. He's an authentic beatmaker and producer. I love Scram, Statik,

Alchemist Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

, ameGreese, Vinny Idol—those dudes make the sound I fuck with. 'Float''didn't start as a project. We just had so much so fast that we thought, "Well, we might as well do something". So we did".

Critical reception

''Float'' was met with generally favourable reviews from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...

. At

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, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 67 based on four reviews.

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's David Jeffries wrote: "think of it as a conceptual street release made for Styles and/or Scram fans and ''Float'' succeeds splendidly". Ronald Grant of ''

HipHopDX ''HipHopDX'' is an online magazine of Hip hop music, hip hop music criticism and news. ''HipHopDX'' has over 3.5M monthly readers, the website encompassing hip hop news, interviews, music, and reviews. The website's founder and CEO is Sharath C ...

'' wrote: "though not his greatest body of work, it places his cunning lyrical skills front and center while showcasing his and Scram Jones' identical ears for quality, bass-heavy production and the fact that gangsters want to have a little fun, too". Peter Marrack of ''

Exclaim! ''Exclaim!'' is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly ''Exclaim!'' print magazine publishes seven ...

'' gave the album a six out of ten, saying "''Float'' (the Yonkers, NY rapper's sixth studio album) explores new sonic territory, rooted in gangster rap, but branching into more experimental electronic production. Jones (who made a name for himself producing for NYC's hardest: Wu-Tang,

Immortal Technique Felipe Andres Coronel (born February 19, 1978), known artistically as Immortal Technique, is an American rapper, activist and songwriter. His lyrics are largely commentary on issues such as politics, religion, institutional racism, and govern ...

Lloyd Banks Christopher Charles Lloyd (born April 30, 1982), better known by his stage name Lloyd Banks, is an American rapper. He began his career as a member of East Coast hip-hop, East Coast hip hop group G-Unit, which he formed with childhood friends ...

) starts bare bones with a sample and then extends the sound outward, filling the body of the track with drums. The result isn't groundbreaking, but it's still fresh for Styles". In mixed reviews, Nick de Molina of '' XXL'' concluded: "all in all, the project is a welcome addition to the

D-Block A block of the periodic table is a set of elements unified by the atomic orbitals their valence electrons or vacancies lie in. The term seems to have been first used by Charles Janet. Each block is named after its characteristic orbital: s-bloc ...

rapper's catalogue, though it's narrow vision holds the album back from reaching any great heights". Grant Jones of RapReviews stated: "minus the niceness of "Manson Murder" and "Hater Love", this should have been a

mixtape In the modern music industry, a mixtape is a musical project, typically with looser constraints than that of an album or extended play. Unlike the traditional album or extended play, mixtapes are labeled as laid-back projects that allow artists mo ...

as it isn't a patch on any of Styles' previous LPs".

Track listing

Personnel

*David "

" Styles — vocals, executive producer *Victor "

Noreaga Victor James Santiago Jr. (born September 6, 1977), better known by his stage names N.O.R.E. (an acronym for Nigga On the Run Eating) and Noreaga, is an American rapper, singer and podcaster. Santiago first rose to prominence as one half of th ...

" Santiago — vocals (track 2) *Sean " Sheek Louch" Jacobs — vocals (track 4) *Jason "

" Phillips — vocals (track 8) *Corey "

" Woods — vocals (track 9) *Bullpen — vocals (track 11) *Marc " Scram Jones" Shemer — vocals (track 12), producer, recording, executive producer *Dragan Čačinović — mixing, mastering *Devin Horwitz — executive producer *Chad Griffith — photography *Matt Wyatt — design

Charts

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2013 albums Styles P albums Nature Sounds albums Albums produced by Scram Jones