Honest Review

Heard now it is a perfectly decent record that wanted to be a coronation. The beats are expensive and slightly stiff, aimed at radio playlists rather than car speakers, and the guest list reads like a label meeting. Move That Dope is enormous, a Mike Will beat with no bottom half and a Pusha T verse that arrives like a door slamming. I Won is glossy and empty.

Covered N Money and Sh!t are the two where the actual style survives the polish. What sinks it is the tone. Half the album is arguing for domestic contentment at the exact moment his personal life was falling apart in public, and you can hear the strain between what the songs claim and what the voice is doing. The commercial disappointment sent him into the mixtape run that reinvented him within a year. As an album it is fine and as a hinge it is important.