KOD Review

The instinct that makes his best work honest turns against him here. He picks a subject, decides he is the adult in the room, and spends forty minutes explaining the harms of drugs, taxes and social media to an audience he plainly views as unwell. That posture would be tolerable with better songs attached, and the songs are the weakest set he has put out, dim minor key loops and drum patterns borrowed from the exact scene he is criticising.

ATM has a good hook and no ideas. Photograph is decent. 1985 is the one everybody argued about, a closing address to younger rappers delivered with a calm that reads as condescension whichever way you spin it. Kevin's Heart is the only track where he writes about himself with any complexity and it is the best thing here. It sold enormously and persuaded nobody of anything.