My Name Is My Name Review

The rapping is beyond argument. He had spent a decade perfecting a specific thing, drug talk delivered with the diction of a man reading a will, and every verse here is dense with the little cruelties that make his writing funny and unpleasant at once. Numbers on the Boards is the peak, an almost empty beat of stomps and a warped vocal, and it is one of the great rap productions of the decade.

Nosetalgia is a masterclass, two generations of the same subject handled without a wasted word. Where it wobbles is the reach for singles. Sweet Serenade and Let Me Love You are pleasant and belong on somebody else's album, and they break the spell the harder tracks build. Trimmed to eight tracks it would be a classic. As released it is an excellent record with a producer's fingerprints pulling in two directions.