Life of a Don Review

The scale went up and the focus went down. There is real quality here in patches, particularly early on, where the beats have some genuine strangeness and the vocal is placed with care. What You Need is the best thing he has recorded, a slow burner with a beat that opens up halfway through and a performance that finally sounds invested. Way Bigger and Flocky Flocky have energy.

Drugs N Hella Melodies is pretty and slight. The problem arrives around track eight, when the album settles into a single texture, hazy synths and mid tempo drums, and stops making any distinction between one song and the next. The writing has not developed at all since the debut and at forty eight minutes that becomes obvious rather than forgivable. Guests come and go without changing the temperature. Handsome, expensive and half asleep, which is a description he would probably accept.