''Major Without a Deal'' is the second

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

by American rapper

Troy Ave Roland Collins (born November 23, 1985), better known by the stage name Troy Ave, is an American rapper from the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. His moniker derives from Troy Avenue, a street near his childhood home. In N ...

. The album was released on June 5, 2015, by BSB Records and

Empire Distribution Empire Distribution, Records and Publishing Inc. (stylized as EMPIRE) is an independent American record label, distribution and publishing company founded in 2010 by Ghazi Shami. Based in San Francisco, EMPIRE has offices in New York, London, ...

Critical reception

''Major Without a Deal'' received mixed reviews from

music critic '' The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of m ...

s. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, 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 61, which indicates "generally favorable reviews", based on 5 reviews. Jesse Fairfax 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 ...

said, "While he maintains a firm grasp on rapping about the intricacies of his criminal past, ''Major Without A Deal'' does little to relay his message as one that is absolutely essential. At this rate, Troy is destined to be a niche artist lacking any true star power. Given his limited vision, he mostly speaks to anyone hung up on the notion that Brooklyn’s vacant throne needs an immediate placeholder." Roger Krastz of '' XXL'' said, "Overall, Troy Ave continues to show improvement and growth as an MC with his latest project, and his ear for beats and ability to pick out correct guest features for certain tracks will only bring bigger and better things in the future. ''Major Without A Deal'' is another step forward for Troy Ave, but it’s also another win for the birthplace of hip-hop."

Track listing

References

2015 albums Troy Ave albums Empire Distribution albums {{2010s-hiphop-album-stub