Thursday Review

The middle chapter sags, and it sags on purpose. Illangelo and Doc McKinney push the murk further than House of Balloons dared, stretching tracks past six and seven minutes, burying the hooks, letting Gone drift for eight without ever resolving into anything you could call a chorus. Taken as texture it is remarkable, and there is a real case that this is the most committed the pair ever were to the atmosphere they built. Taken as songs it is thin.

The Zone works because Drake arrives and gives the thing a second centre of gravity. The Birds Part 1 has the best guitar line across the three tapes. Life of the Party is genuinely menacing. But the writing has curdled from ambiguity into plain nastiness, the same three scenes cycle without escalating, and forty minutes in you notice you stopped hearing words some time ago. The people who defend this hardest are defending a mood rather than a record, and they are not wrong about the mood. It is the sound of a formula finding its own limits roughly six months after inventing itself.