My Turn Review

What separates him from the field is legibility. He raps in complete thoughts, in a conversational register, about specific practical anxieties, and on this album that plainness finally has beats worth carrying it. Emotionally Scarred is the standout, a sung hook and a verse about a relationship failing that never once reaches for a metaphor. Sum 2 Prove is the motivational one and it earns the swagger.

We Paid works. Woah is fun and slight. Grace and Forget That are the writing at its most direct. The production is the polished modern Atlanta sound handled properly, warm keys and drums with actual snap. At twenty tracks it inevitably sags, and the final stretch is the usual streaming era padding. But this was the most played rap record of a very strange year and it holds up better than that fact suggests it should.