Lil Pump
Harverd Dropout

2.0
poor

Review

by MAN0 USER (2 Reviews)
March 1st, 2019 | 25 replies

Release Date: 2019 | Tracklist

Review Summary: Which do you think will age worse: Pump or his music?

The infamous Sir Pump’s second effort is not really an all-too different beast from the Lil Pump tape on the surface - you know how it works: simple, hard-hitting beats; little-to-no care for lyricism besides hitting the main topics of sex, drugs and money; simple, catchy flows. While generally I am not a fan of such hedonistic activities, I don’t think the point really is to listen to the lyrics. Fine.

There is, however, something that’s drastically different from the Pump tape. It sort of crept up on me. I was not really having that much fun, but didn’t initially realize why. At first I thought it was just the fact that Pump’s at-times disgusting and bizarre arrogance shown in his lyrics at the fact that not only did he quit his education, but he’s rich and addicted to drugs - I mean, come on. There’s nothing to be proud of about the fact that you have a chemical dependency - that was pissing me off, and while it along with the constantly re-used ad-libs wasn’t particularly fun, I wasn’t on second listen as troubled by those things.

Then it hit me: the songs on this album are incredibly boring. I don’t think anyone was under the illusion that Pump had a particularly long shelf-life or that he could pull the exact same thing he did last time, but whatever the way forward is, this isn’t it. Sorry.

The beats are boring and incredibly clean. Where’s the danger and the excitement? The bass? In the mix there are a few songs that fit the D Rose or Boss style of “classic” Pump: definitional bangers that hit you incredibly hard, such as the songs Nu Uh and ESSKEETIT, but overall the album falls flat on its face because of Pump’s attempt at retaining his charm while changing his style into a more commercial and polished one - perhaps as a genuine artistic evolution, perhaps as merely an attempt to grasp onto the little relevance he was never going to retain, let’s be real.

This failure is in my opinion shown in its clearest form in Pump’s newest music videos. Look at Racks On Racks - an in-fact alright song - whose music video is incredibly awkward due to the fact that it tries to retain the general goofiness of Pump’s persona while presenting a high-production value video with the classic “women, money, and guns” idea. Even the infamous Gucci Gang video is simple and goofy; while the production seems improved from something like the D Rose video, it’s true to what Pump is: an outsider kid who happened to make it big.

That’s not even mentioning the features. I Love It is not a song that should be on this record, but it’s still more fun than most other tracks. ION also features good verses from Pump’s friend smokepurpp, but every track with a feature after that is a waste of your time. Wayne’s feature on Be Like Me (which, no, nobody wants to be you, Pump) is the worst on the album on a song that really could’ve helped without him stretching it to an insufferably long four minutes. It sounds incredibly phoned-in, but now that I think about it, so does half of what’s here.

As an album, Harverd functions as a clear sign at the lack of any real longevity for Lil Pump, in both the public eye as well as in his ability to create interesting music. We’ll see if he ends up like his Drug Addicts video co-star Charlie Sheen: jumping up and down on the trampoline of public interest merely by his bizarre act and aging shtick, with people concernedly looking on. I don’t think I want that, even to be correct.

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