The Bad Guy Chronicles Celebrates 5-Years!
Today marks the 5th anniversary of John Anthony’s second studio album “The Bad Guy Chronicles”.
Released on June 26, 2020, “The Bad Guy Chronicles”, or ‘BGC’ for short, was the second studio album released by John Anthony under his newly founded label Villainous Records, along with former music agency Chaos Music Group.
The album featured 20 songs, with two sides ranging from both boom-bap and trap styles. The production on the album done was by several producers including executive production by John Anthony and Edward Johnson. “The Bad Guy Chronicles” was supported by its loan single “Ballin”, which released a month before on May 28, 2020. It was the first single to reach major streaming platforms, marking ‘BGC’ as the first LP to reach Spotify and Apple Music.
On June 2, 2020, John Anthony teased a snippet of new music on his Instagram story, stating: “Its so close you can almost taste it...coming soon”. A week later on June 11, John Anthony and Villainous Records announced the album on social media. The album’s artwork was received generally mixed due to many voicing comparisons to Eminem’s 1999 debut album cover The Slim Shady LP. The album also was the creation of John Anthony’s ruthless persona: The Villain.
The Bad Guy Chronicles received mixed reviews from music critics and fans alike. It was praised for its creativity but also degraded for its use of homophobia and misogyny through certain lyrics. It also was heavily criticized for sounding like Eminem, with many believing it was a ‘bite’ off of “The Slim Shady LP”.
The album’s numbers, however, did much better than expected. With currently over 85k worldwide streams on all major platforms, including over 40k currently on Spotify alone. As of today, it’s the 4th most streamed John Anthony album, behind “Villaination!” (#1), “Success Story” (#2) and “Heroes 2 Villains” (#3).
