Soul Sold Separately Review

After three near perfect producer collaborations he signed a major deal and made the record that money buys: many producers, big guests, a Las Vegas concept with skits about a hotel, and a mix cleaner and louder than anything he had done before. Some of it is very good. Zipper Bagz has a beat that snarls. Pain and Strife and Space Rabbit are up to his standard. Blackest in the Room is one of the better things he has written about being himself in rooms that do not want him there.

The trouble is that the concept never does anything, the skits interrupt momentum for a joke that stops being funny after the first time, and with no single producer setting a mood the album has no sonic identity of its own. He raps at the same elite level he always has. Everything around him is a compromise, and after Alfredo the drop in atmosphere is impossible to ignore.