The Documentary 2 Review

Reviews in 2015 ran warm and the case for it is not empty. The beats are real, with DJ Premier and Boi-1da and Mike WiLL Made-It and Hit-Boy on the board, and Standing on Ferraris and 100 both do what they set out to do. Graded against the title it claims, though, it comes apart. A sequel to The Documentary invites the only comparison it cannot survive, and that comparison exposes the weakness that was always there, now with nothing expensive built around it.

He is still rapping in names. Whole verses are lists of people he has met, records he loves and cities he has passed through, delivered with the conviction he had at twenty five and none of the hunger. Nineteen tracks runs past seventy minutes and a companion album lands the following week, which is an enormous amount of music from a man working one story. The stretch through the middle is close to unlistenable, generic trap and generic hooks, and the features do the lifting every time the room goes quiet. There is a decent forty minute album buried in here. He was never the person likely to find it.