Rapid Fire Reviews: Contemporary Hip Hop with Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Durk, Jack Harlow, & Gunna
Contemporary hip hop is having the down year of all down years. Until Lil Uzi dropped Pink Tape it hadn't even had a number-one album at any point in 2023. That's why I largely felt okay putting it on the back burner as none of the records were exactly critical darlings either. Now, before Travis Scott comes along and resets the game later this month I'm taking a look at some of the biggest release of the year so far.
Business Is Business - Young Thug
I assumed that this would be like many releases made when an artists is unable to be directly involved in the artistic process for one reason or another. But I've also been a big fan of Thugger in the past and I thought his deep cuts might be at least on par with some of his contemporaries studio material, I was right. This album isn't amazing or anything and it's far from his best but it also still manages to stand above many of his contemporaries despite his incarceration. Firstly, the album's 46-minute runtime is refreshing given Thugger surely had the instinct to stack this with as much leftover material as possible. It also starts off strong with Drake hopping aboard to meaningfully play off Thugger's current situation on Parade In Cleveland. He also comes up later and adds a pinpoint vibe to album's biggest Oh U Went. Some of the songs here continue to follow Thug's often genuine ambition. Cars Bring Me Out is a major highlight and another Thug/Future classic. Plus Thugger continues to be the only avenue through which we get new music from fun. frontman Nate Ruess, even if it is usually just short hooks.
Just as much as features can help this project, they can also weigh it down. Travis Scott in particular brings the middle of the record to an absolute slog with two of the most uninspired appearances I've ever heard him make. Tracks later on in the record like Hellcat Kitty and Hoodie aren't great to begin with but certainly aren't helped much by the features. Despite those shortcomings, I was pretty satisfied by this album overall. While it certainly isn't any kind of reinvention of Thugger's sound and it's on the inconsistent side his personality still shines through. To that end, this is one of the better projects Young Thug has been a part of in the years since So Much Fun. 6.5/10
Pink Tape - Lil Uzi Vert
It's no secret that I haven't always been the biggest Lil Uzi fan in the world, in fact, some fans never let me forget it. But going into Pink Tape at the very least I can say Uzi is comfortably the most unique of all five artists I'm covering today and I certainly won't mistake their genre experiments for somebody like Gunna. Unfortunately, for every one worthwhile diatribe the album goes on you have a song like Aye or Amped dragging everything down to earth. And this consistency lasts for literally the entire 80 minute runtime of the album. Pink Tape bounces between hard-hitting catchy moments of spacey trap with some rock instrumentation mixed in and som painfully drab circular trap songs that wouldn't make the bottom of the Carti leaks folder.
Originally I had a lot of notes on this album breaking down the tracks I liked and didn't like but it was dreadfully repetitive. So I'll say this, the album has highlights. The opener Flooded The Face is a great example which leads the album off on a strong note. I also found myself enjoying the divisive Endless Fashion though that has more to do with Nicki Minaj's hilarious contributions than Uzi's own performance. I wanna make sure I'm not making this album sound awful from start to finish. The experiments really are a nice touch even if they only work sparsely. Listening to this album is nowhere near as painful as Uzi's previous Eternal Atake whose slop tracklist was much harder to differentiate from each other. Pink Tape's biggest hit Just Wanna Rock dropped last year and I still think it's one of the most pointless hit songs I've ever heard. Funny enough though, one of my favorite tracks on the record sees Uzi leaning into their rock side. Werewolf has a Bring Me The Horizon feature that fully earns its keep sounding much more like one of their songs than Uzi's. This album is very inconsistent with at least one high point for every low. The only real solace I can take is that I think it's an improvement from Uzi's last album, even if the results still sit below where their potential is. 5.5/10
a Gift & a Curse - Gunna
This was always going to be an interesting record. Gunna's first release since "snitching" as part of a plea deal in the YSL case beat label-mate Young Thug's album out by a week and followed a period of predominate silence online. Regardless of what he did it was going to face criticism, and yet, this album received a LOT more praise from both fans and critics than Gunna's previous work. That had me pretty interested as I've never been a fan of Gunna at all. I think my favorite project of his so far is Wunna which I reviewed and called the absolute middle-of-the-road mediocrity. So going into a Gift & a Curse I was excited despite not loving the albums lead single which dropped a week earlier. Honestly, I think the album gets off to a decent start with back at it and back to the moon. The songs represent the best of one thing I think the album does well, play it lowkey. On projects like DS4 where Gunna tried to lend his absolute nothing of a voice to bangers. it went extremely poorly. But in this more reserved format, the monotone and expressionless vocals fit in much better. Unfortunately, he's still Gunna, so the lyrics on this album are awful. From blaming his plea deal on his own lawyers to the literal toilet bars on the albums painful breakout hit fukumean Gunna is even worse than usual lyrically. For Gunna I think this averages out to the slightest of steps forward. Despite some real rough patches in the middle of the tracklist ultimately I think this might be the best Gunna project to date. I think that might be interpreted as more of a diss than praise though, since the album is still exceedingly mediocre. 5.5/10
Jackman. - Jack Harlow
After initially thinking Jack Harlow could hold his own as one of rap music's vibe suitors that quickly became unclear on his supremely underwhelming commercial breakthrough album last year. What I certainly didn't expect him to do is turn around and surprise drop a more uncommercial follow-up only a year later. I'm still not positive on Jack's own motivation for this move but I'll say that as a critic I think it was a very solid choice because this is a major improvement. Harlow certainly isn't rewriting the book with the new project but it dodges some of the pop music pitfalls that his last album falls victim to.
One clear point of focus is on the lyrics where Jack is obviously trying to up his game, with mixed results. Opening track Common Ground sees Harlow near his most lyrically focused ever and the results are impressive. I also think the album ends with a very solid one two punch of Blame On Me and Questions. But then a song like Ambitious comes along which has more pitfalls than you can even imagine a 3 minute track delivering. That's kind fo the thing with this project overall. While it's an improvement on MANY fronts, Harlow isn't exactly entering the A-list with these songs. The best example is Gang Gang Gang which does have compelling ambitions at its core but Harlow REALLY fumbles them in a way that makes it clear he's not really ready to be handling material that sensitive. Songs like No Enhancers and It Can't Be later on in the tracklist also have rough lyrical approaches to rather sensitive subjects that make it hard to praise them. Ultimately, while this album is an improvement and I like more of it than I don't, Harlow is just going to have to improve his lyrical game to match his often quite solid flows and reach his full potential. 6/10
Almost Healed - Lil Durk
I went into this album a little bit skeptic. The last two times I've checked in on Lil Durk I've come away moderately unimpressed. While he came away looking like the highlight of The Voice Of The Heroes that may have more to do with Lil Baby's shortcomings than Durk's appeal. Those speculations seemed to be confirmed by last years 7220 a distinctly underwhelming studio album from Durk. Surprisingly, I was quite fond of this album's lead single All My Life which features strong performances from both Durk and J. Cole. It's gone on to be one of the biggest rap hits of the year so far which I'm also pretty impressed by and happy about. So if Durk was ever going to impress me with an album, I thought it would be this one.
Despite what you might think with the lead single being a solid highlight taking on serious subject matter, this album is at its worst when it tries to be genuine. Moments like Sad Songs are HUGE misses both emotionally and vocally that could have been cut out and massively improved the way the album unfolds. It's a shame because they're often interrupting strings of otherwise good tunes. Later on the album it starts to address relationship issues and does a very poor job of it on tracks like B12 and At This Point We Stuck. Continuing with Sad Songs as an example. the track is immediately followed by two of the record's best moments the short but sweet Before Fajr and the absolutely cutthroat War Bout It with 21 Savage. While we're talking features they definitely aren't a strength of the album. While many of them are just plain not very memorable or poorly used, Kodak Black is awful even for his standards, which are as low as standards get. While I liked this album the first time through, the inconsistencies started to really pile up. Much like Pink Tape there is a decent record in here but it's drowned in way too much mediocre material. Unlike Pink Tape it's really easy to define what the album does well and poorly. Durk's ability to serve up hard-hitting street raps is clear and when the record is in that lane it honestly sounds really good. But too many of these tracks fall VERY short on the promise of approaching things more seriously and it really starts to add up. 5.5/10
