Review Summary: Frankenstein's Emo
Let's straighten one thing out right away: it's really easy to look at
The Kid Laroi as another flash-in-the-pan emo rapper capitalizing on the success of Juice WRLD, Lil Peep and their legions of copycats while simultaneously trying to imitate the worst of SoundCloud rap, or even worse: Peepcore for weeaboos who hate themselves. From just looking at the album cover, the very name of the album, and the abundance of godawful skits, it would be quite easy to write this guy off as the second coming of Brokencyde after being Frankensteined into a middle school anime club reject, Ghostemane, and XXXTentacion's corpse. But
something about this guy is compelling. Maybe it's his knack for extreme catchiness, or the fact that he's actually a half-decent singer and rapper at the same time, but surprisingly
F**k Love is actually quite an enjoyable mixtape.
While Laroi is as guilty of using Auto-Tune as basically every single rapper since T-Pain, it isn't completely overdone to the point of annoyance; in fact, it shockingly compliments the music very well. Even without said Auto-Tune, he's still a very competent singer; he has good range, it's tone sounds great, and it's able to carry a song alone. His skills as a rapper are competent; he flows well, but he's nothing to really shout at. Laroi's biggest strengths, as mentioned before, is his knack for catchiness:
F**k Love is absolutely brimming with earworms from front to back, with particular standouts being true opener "Maybe", Juice WRLD collaboration "Go" (where the chemistry between the two is just
so freaking good that it's a shame we'll never see another), "Need You Most (So Sick)" and closer "Selfish". Unfortunately, being a rookie, Laroi also tends to fall into some very basic traps: his lyrics are certainly nothing special, with repetitive lines such as "So maybe, maybe I'm driving me crazy / Maybe it's me and it's not you / I'm not too good at admitting when I f**k up / But maybe, maybe it's you who can save me" and "Tell me why, tell me why it's so hard to say goodbye / And when I get inside of my mind, I lose my time / Thinking 'bout the times we had, thinking 'bout the time we spent / Tell me why you left when you told me this was forever and / Tell me why, tell me why it's so hard to say goodbye, yeah". The overabundance of skits on
F**k Love are also
immensely irritating; this reviewer has never been a fan of skits on hip hop albums, and this particular album has
four; none of them are entertaining at all, instead just consisting of meandering phone calls that never go anywhere and probably should have just been cut entirely.
While the lyricism and overbearing bulls**t complaints can probably be chalked down to inexperience, the same cannot be said for the production, which has been handled by both members of Juice WRLD's production team and big names like Benny Blanco who really should know better by now. The loudness war never truly went away, and stuff like
F**k Love just drives that through your skull even more, although the actual mixing itself isn't terrible; despite this, everything is a giant wall of noise and it makes the music less enjoyable than it would be without it. However,
F**k Love is an enjoyable mixtape who's faults can be chalked down to rookie mistakes; if the kid improves, things are looking pretty promising for the future.
