Monsters In My Basement
| Monsters In My Basement | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 12 December 2019 | |||
| Recorded | 2015–17 | |||
| Genre | Emo rap · trap · alternative rock · rap rock | |||
| Length | 62:17 | |||
| Label | L.B.C. · Imperial Worldwide | |||
| Producer |
Various
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| Lil Coast chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Monsters In My Basement | ||||
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| Deluxe edition cover | ||||
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Monsters In My Basement is the fourth studio album by Sierran rapper and singer Lil Coast. His second posthumous album overall, it was released on 12 December 2019 by L.B.C. and Imperial Worldwide, being his last with both labels due to the rapper's estate gaining rights to his recording catalog in early 2024. The album features a guest appearance from rapper Greyy Mein, a frequent collaborator, with production from frequent collaborators such as multi-instrumentalist Andrew "Bandit" West, alongside high-profile producers such as Streetside and Quitmydayjob, as well as from L.B.C. in-house producers Gun Gary, 2hotZero, HerbO and Sw!tch, and from EDM pop trio Pink Zombies. It serves as a tie-in for a Webbox-produced documentary titled Lil Coast: In My Dreams, released on 19 December 2019. Monsters In My Basement was leaked to the internet two days before its official release date.
The album was supported by three singles: "Inside My Head", "Out Of Luck", and "Road Runners". Upon release, Monsters In My Basement received generally positive reviews and would debut atop the Sunset 100, earning 112,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, becoming the rapper's second number-one charting album and fifth top-10 chart release overall. It also reached number one in several other countries, including Astoria, the United Kingdom, and Germany. A deluxe edition would release on 10 January 2020.
Background
During Lil Coast's contract with Imperial Worldwide between 2015 and 2017, the rapper released two studio albums, both debuting at number 13 and 2 on the Sunset 100 albums chart respectively, and eight mixtapes, amongst various singles. His prolific release rate of music with themes relating to heartbreak, alienation, depression, addiction, and episodes such as sleep paralysis would garner the rapper a mass appeal with the youth subculture, with a September 2017 cover-spread for Sunset 100 referring to him as the "Future of Emo". On 28 December 2017, at age 21, Lil Coast was gunned down while waiting outside a Shirley's in Grands Ballons, Gold Coast. Five suspects were arrested and charged with first-degree murder among other charges, with the motive believing to be related to gang violence though no conclusive motive for the murder has been reached. In June 2022, all five suspects were found guilty, with three receiving life-sentences for being directly involved in the killing while two received fifteen-to-life for additional involvement in the killing.
It would be reported shortly following the rapper's death in January 2018 that, despite his release rate, there were more than a hundred unreleased songs. Despite dozens of songs leaking online through illegal group-buys throughout the spring and summer of 2018, the first posthumous album, From My Window, would be released on 3 August 2018, debuting at number one on the Sunset 100 albums chart with support from singles such as "Stressed", "What If" and "Bullets For My Valentine".
Composition and lyrics
The album's theme sees Lil Coast discuss heartbreak, addiction and mental turmoil. Music on the album draws influence from lo-fi, emo, cloud rap, punk rock, nu metal, trap and acoustic genres. Like Lil Coast's previous albums, songs feature piano chords and acoustic guitar, with additionally features such as electric guitar riffs. Regarding the album's genre, Noah Bradley of La Brea Times wrote, "Monsters In My Basement features a fusion of melodic hooks and introspective lyrics. Coast, known for his candid and emotional storytelling, further delves into personal struggles, relationships, and the challenges of fame throughout the album. The production is marked by atmospheric beats, punk rock euphemisms, catchy melodies, and the artist's varied use of vocal inflections."
Songs such as "First Time", "In The Car", "Fall", "Don't Panic", "Not That Easy", "Slow Me Down", "Underworld", "Your Loss" and "Out Of Luck" feature the rapper singing a chorus and rapping his verses over rock-inspired instrumentals, usually exploring his tumultuous relationships, addiction, or depression. On "Far Away", Coast raps on the chorus "Hell ain't that far away (Hell ain't that far) / And neither is Heaven (Hell ain't that far)". On the album's shortest but slow-moving track "It Ain't So", Coast seemingly sings about heartbreak while the lyrics themselves reflect addiction: "Tell me it ain't so, She found a new home / I tried to move on, My new bitch lives in Styrofoam". "Road Runners" was originally meant to be the opening track for the rapper's second studio album I'm Not Human (2017), but was cut from the track listing due to sampling clearance issues at the time. In the intro to the song, Coast compares himself to Ozzy Osburn of Planetaria, saying he is a "Modern-day rockstar, honestly". Coast raps in the first verse: "I get so high I panic, off of the medi—cine need a medic, medic (Yeah, yeah, yeah)", while later rapping, "We keep them guns on us, we always war-ready / My gun sing like Sophia, so I'mma need Moore of it / If he talk out his neck, then his momma gon' bury 'em". In the second verse of "Road Runners", Coast raps "I'm livin' life like I'm Genesys, tryna kill me you'll need 50 clips".
"Better Off Alone" and "Substance" explore themes of excessive drug abuse, with the former featuring Coast rapping: "My brother told me to describe the perfect bitch / I said, "Percocets" (Hahaha)". Coast describes his experience with sleep paralysis on "Inside My Head" while rapping in the third verse: "I know that I am a goner / But it ain't over until it's over", while "Blastoff" featuring Greyy Mein was reported to have been a part of an unfinished collaborative album that was shelved following the rapper's passing. On the chorus for "Out of Luck", Coast sings "They tell me that I won't live to see tomorrow, but I don't give a fuck / I'm running out of patience, I'm numb to pleasure, I'm runnin' out of luck". On the album's closer, "Misunderstood", Coast raps: "Diggin' up bones in the graveyard / Lookin' at the past, ain't as easy as it looks", while in the verse he raps: "Keep a firearm, do I look like a bodyguard?". Many commentators see some of these lyrics as the rapper foreshadowing his demise. Songs that appear on the album were recorded at various points in Lil Coast's career.
Release and promotion
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On 7 June 2019, during the Lil Coast Day annual festival which is held on the first Friday of June at the Norfolk Scope in Coast's hometown of San Diego, Laguna, the album's lead single, "Inside My Head", would be released as a single for streaming and digital download, with the music video premiering at the festival, which consisted of archival footage from the rapper. Produced by EDM pop trio Pink Zombies, the song would peak at number 7 on the Sunset 100 singles chart. After a cover performance of the song at the festival by lead singer Conrad Kennedy, the singer would recall in an interview after the show:
We had made the song the same night we recorded "What If". I was personally such a big fan of his and being able to work with him and just make music with him was an absolute honor. With this song, we decided to keep it exactly the way we had made it that night, as I was honestly too tired at the time to do any vocals, Leah was asleep and George was there with Coast playing around on the piano. So we hope everybody enjoys this moment as much as we do.
On 25 October 2019, the second single "Out Of Luck" would be released for streaming and digital download. "Out Of Luck" would debut at number 8 on the Sunset 100 singles chart. On 4 November, a teaser for the album and Lil Coast's clothing line, titled From The Basement, was released through his Telegram story. In the video, the release was presented as "the final studio album". On 5 December, the third and final single, "Road Runners", would be released for streaming and digital download, with a music video premiering the same day with footage of Coast recording the song in the studio. The song would debut at number 20 on the Sunset 100 singles chart. The following day, on December 6, the album's release date would be announced. Monsters In My Basement would be released on 12 December 2019. On the same day as the album's release, an animated music video would be released for "Blastoff" featuring rapper and longtime collaborator Greyy Mein, with the animated video depicting the two rappers being transported into a video game where they fight off demons.
On 2 January 2020, Coast's estate announced the release of the digital deluxe edition and pre-order for vinyl pressings for release on 10 January. Included in the deluxe were an acoustic version of "In My Dreams", as well as the unreleased songs "No Laces", "Run The Town" and "Set Me Free", which had each garnered tens of millions of streams as leaked songs.
Cover art
On 10 December 2019, Lil Coast's team unveiled the album cover, which is a close-up of the rapper in a black-and-white photo, with his right arm clutching his left shoulder while he looks down. The deluxe edition features the rapper in the same position but looking at the camera. The cover art was originally taken by photographer Jerome Franklin, who snapped the photo of Lil Coast as part of a spread for Newstar in November 2017, however after the rapper's death, the focus of the spread would change and originals discarded. The photos would resurface sometime in 2019 when his estate gained access to Coast's telePad, which was held as evidence regarding his murder, with the originals having still been saved to the rapper's cellphone.
Critical reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 74/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| WhatMyMusic? |  
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| The Huntington Beach Post | 
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| La Brea Times | C+ |
| Newstar |
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| Porciúncula Times | 7.1/10 |
| Zeke Media | C |
| Music Box Magazine | 5.5/10 |
| Sierra Media | 6.87/10 |
| The Unionist |
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| The Underground | 6.7/10 |
| The Publicist |
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| Sunset 40 | 7/10 |
Monsters In My Basement was met with a generally positive reception. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 74, based on 14 reviews. Aggregator WhatMyMusic? gave it 3 out of 5 stars, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.
Reviewers generally praised the album's sound and blend of genres. Taylor Fuentes of The Huntington Beach Post gave the album a 3.5 out of 5, and argued that; "Genre-blending albums (no matter how commonplace they might be these days) are not easy to pull off and for that, Lil Coast should be given credit. From the seemingly sincere lyrics to the equally candid delivery, Coast truly goes with his gut in whichever way (rap, sing, hum, sob)". Bailey Wallace of La Brea Times praised Greyy Mein's guest appearance on "Blastoff", mentioning that the album stands out over other post-mortem projects because, in comparison, there are "surprisingly (and happily) no posthumous pop features". Concluding, Wallace gave the project a rating of 3.8/5 or C, citing that Monsters "shows the other side of Lil Coast, which was never explored enough while he was alive" and that the project manages to deepen his narrative with a level of care rarely seen on posthumous releases. Reviewing the album for Newstar, Jonah Parks stated, "Monsters In My Basement embodies Lil Coast in that way: a flawed album with moments of brilliance that feels uncomfortable to listen to but is unashamed of its true humanity. In that aspect, it becomes a balancing act of the man and the artist, melding the two to create a project that's genuine and authentic – just like Lil Coast".
Fred Thomas of Porciúncula Times said, "Themes of struggling to overcome depression, gun violence and drug dependency surface often on Monsters In My Basement, making it a heavier collection than the sometimes celebratory memoriam of From My Window. It's not an essential piece of the Lil Coast story, but it's also not without some solid reminders of his greatness... Monsters, his second posthumous album is a tortured but overall sentimental release from a talented artist who left us all too soon". In a lukewarm review, Music Box Magazine's Vincenzo Cox wrote, "Ultimately Monsters In My Basement works almost as a tribute record, gathering fragments of his certain genius. Whether it's a true Lil Coast release, though, is another matter". Alex Pruitt of Sierra Media said in his 6.87/10 review that, "Monsters succeeded in its most fundamental mission, which was to prove that the artist's short career atop the charts was not a fluke. Songs like "Road Runners", "Out Of Luck", "Inside My Head" strike a dynamic balance of raw charisma and profound anxiety. While his melodrama tends to grow old over the course of a 22-track, hour-long album, it is captivating and can, at some times, be devastating". Steve "Flash" Juon of The Underground said at the end of his 6.7 out of 10 review that while he enjoyed the "catchy tunes" at times, that it was "hard to call them rap songs and even harder to ignore the subtext that drugs are both the cause of and solution to his problems. Irresponsible abuse of powerful narcotics or prescription medications solves nothing. It's easy to pretend Lil Coast is just a fictional character the late Keenan Goodwin portrayed for the sake of music, but too many of his peers have died over the years for me to safely assume it's all just a gimmick for him. Monsters In My Basement feels an awful lot like an unabridged teenage diary; while the occasional clever turn of phrase and moment of profundity is sure to bubble up, most of it is simple self-indulgence, an onslaught of pure emotion whose sincerity is never in question, but all of which starts to blur together after a mere few pages or songs".
Commercial performance
Monsters In My Basement debuted at number one on the KS Sunset 100 chart, earning 112,000 album-equivalent units (including 19,000 copies in pure album sales) in its first week. This became Lil Coast's second KS number-one album. In its second week, the album remained at number one on the chart, moving an additional 83,000 units. In its third week, the album dropped to number five on the chart, earning another 51,000 units. In its fourth week, the album dropped to number seven on the chart, earning 39,000 more units. In January 2022, it was reported the album was certified platinum for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over one million units in the Kingdom of Sierra alone. The album would additionally chart abroad, receiving two gold certifications for sales of 100,000 by both the United Kingdom's BPI and Germany's BVMI.
Track listing
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Producer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "First Time" | Keenan Goodwin · Andrew West | Lil Coast · Bandit | 2:39 |
| 2. | "In The Car" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 2:47 |
| 3. | "Far Away" | Goodwin · Caiden Brooks | DaaDah Bless | 2:04 |
| 4. | "It Ain't So" | Goodwin · Tyrone Davenport | Streetside | 1:47 |
| 5. | "Road Runners" | Goodwin · Leon Clark · Samuel McIntyre · West | Sw!tch · HerbO · Bandit | 2:45 |
| 6. | "Fall" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 2:55 |
| 7. | "Better Off Alone" | Goodwin · KeAndre Ware · Jakobe Adkins | KUJ0 · DJ Blocksquad | 3:48 |
| 8. | "Purple Devils" | Goodwin · Alex Corrin · Charles Harrison | Ahhxander · 17Idol | 2:36 |
| 9. | "Don't Panic" | Goodwin · Gerald Damons | Gun Gary | 3:44 |
| 10. | "Substance" | Goodwin · Cole Savage | Quitmydayjob | 3:19 |
| 11. | "Underworld" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 2:50 |
| 12. | "Keep Your Eyes Up" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 2:53 |
| 13. | "Your Loss" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 3:32 |
| 14. | "Back Home" | Goodwin · Brooks | DaaDah Bless | 2:51 |
| 15. | "Not That Easy" | Goodwin · West | Bandit · Lil Coast | 3:07 |
| 16. | "Inside My Head" | Goodwin · George Russell | Pink Zombies | 4:17 |
| 17. | "Scars" | Goodwin · Sonny Olsen | BigStacksBP | 3:48 |
| 18. | "Blastoff" (featuring Greyy Mein) | Goodwin · Jamar Rashid · Gerald Damons | Gun Gary | 2:45 |
| 19. | "Further" | Goodwin · Chris Meyer · Darren Reyes | 2hotZero · Luvu | 2:38 |
| 20. | "Slow Me Down" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 3:37 |
| 21. | "Out Of Luck" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 3:12 |
| 22. | "Misunderstood" | Goodwin · Savage | Quitmydayjob | 2:11 |
| Total length: | 62:17 | |||
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Producer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6. | "No Laces" | Goodwin · Damons | Gun Gary | 3:17 |
| 8. | "Run The Town" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 2:58 |
| 25. | "In My Dreams - acoustic" | Goodwin · West | Bandit | 1:55 |
| 26. | "Set Me Free" | Goodwin · Davenport | Streetside | 3:56 |
| Total length: | 74:03 | |||
Personnel
- Swirlkey – recording engineer, mastering (tracks 1–22)
- Bandit – mixing (track 1–2, 5–6, 8–13, 15, 20, 21)
- Colten Emerson – mixing (track 1–22)
- Kyle Kaur – mixing (track 5)
- Evan Wynn – mixing assistant (track 5, 9)
- Dominic Carter – mixing assistant (track 9)
- Tom Hunt – mixing assistant (track 9)
Certifications
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Kingdom of Sierra (RIAA) | Platinum | 1,000,000 |
| Republic of Astoria (MC) | Gold | 50,000 |
| Kingdom of Brazoria (RIAA) | Gold | 50,000 |
| Kingdom of Superior (RIAA) | Silver | 40,000 |
| United Kingdom (BPI) | Silver | 60,000 |
| Germany (BVMI) | Gold | 100,000 |
Release history
| Region | Date | Label(s) | Format(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Various | 12 December 2019 |
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| 2 January 2020 |
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See also
- Fire Shack, the 2019 posthumous album by Q-Lo.
- Power II, the 2022 posthumous album by Blaxkface Killer.
- Live At The Gates Of Hell, the 2018 album by Yung Nevabroke featuring Lil Coast.