Donald Glover very nearly couldn't possibly win. His only chance was to not give a fuck and lay it all out there. But instead he put out an album that very much gives a fuck, that wants very much to be liked, that puts his voice dead front and center, that makes countless arty gestures, that out-Kanye's Kanye in every way possible, for better, for worse, for a net loss. It's like dude wrote a list of every possible way people could diss his album and designed an album to thwart each angle of attack, one by one, swerving arty here, directly rapping vs. accusations of fakeness there. Heck, he even tried looking bored on the album cover to show how much he doesn't give a fuck, gave the album a dismissive title like he doesn't give a fuck. But tunes don't lie.
Production's intricate. Rapping's wicked clever. Very very clever, totally well done, intricate as hell. The whole thing has all the right parts, but a monstrosity's been built out of them, a rap album with no particular actual voice, with no realness at all, sounding like a talented rapper with no real hunger, with infinite resources at his disposal making the best album he can. Which is great. But it's ELO rap. I like ELO. But that don't work that well for us in hip hop. At least Kanye went King Crimson.
Glover shoulda gone Das Racist, gone bare bones, gone couldn't give a fuck, gone "I don't even need rap - rap needs me", but instead we got long instrumental interludes, got bombast and ballast, got a gorgeous empty shell that's great to look at and shitty to live in, swooping scaffolding showing through, geometric chairs that suck to sit in, an album that I enjoy immensely in places but feel hollow listening to 2.5/5
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