Review Summary: Migos are not having the same monumental start they had in 2017, and scaring fans off with a 1 hour 45 minute project doesn't help.
2017 was the year of
Migos. Riding on the success of trap megahit and "raindrop, droptop"/
Lil Uzi Vert "yuh yuh yuh yuh" meme sensation "Bad and Boujee", the Atlanta trio broke into 2017 as a household name preceding the January release of their breakthrough album,
Culture. Their success kept growing from there - additional singles "T-Shirt" and "Slippery", and deeper cuts like "Kelly Price" and "Get Right Witcha" kept trap fans and radios playing Migos all year long thanks to infectious, charismatic hooks and unique southern trap instrumentals. While the biggest contribution from
Takeoff outside of Culture may have been his "do it look like I'm left off bad and boujee" retort in the group's infamous Everyday Struggle interview, it seemed like
Quavo was on an autotuned hook for a new chart-topping single every week.
Offset (ATL) teamed up with
Metro Boomin and
21 Savage to release the cold-blooded
Without Warning mixtape just in time for Halloween, with Offset's solo performance on "Ric Flair Drip" finding its place on top hip hop charts.
Few artists had a bigger 2017 than Migos. A month into 2018, signs do not point to the same level of success.
The Atlanta trappers came into the year on a rocky start.
Culture II singles "Stir Fry" and "Motorsport" featuring
Cardi B and
Nicki Minaj didn't share the same level of success as those leading up to the album's predecessor. "Stir Fry" is a mid-paced dance-floor banger with a refreshing beat by Migos standards, rife with pitched whistles and bongo accents. Outside of a funny Apple Animoji commercial, the single fell through the cracks somewhat and did not enjoy the chart topping success of the singles from
Culture. The latter single is a generic snooze-fest of a trap song. Cardi B's choppy flow and amateurishly braggadocios lyrics make her sound like she won a contest to get featured, and Offset swearing he won't tell "If Nicki show me her titty" on the same track featuring his fiancé is comical. Later in January, negative headlines surfaced when an Offset feature on a
YFN Lucci track sported the bar "I cannot vibe with queers", prompting a major backlash accusing him of homophobia - accusations Migos are no strangers to based off of other controversial statements in their past.
Things only got worse when it was revealed upon the January 26 release of the album that
Culture II was an agonizing 105 minutes long. Many fans were not looking forward to almost 2 hours of leaned out, autotuned triplet flows and ad-libs from Quavo, Offset, and Takeoff over the usual southern trap beats the group hops on. For the majority of this album, these premonitions hold true. Following the recent obsession of long, bloated pop albums in an effort to bolster album sales and streaming numbers (of which
Chris Brown is notoriously guilty of with his recent 2 1/2 hour long 2017 effort), a large portion of this album consists of forgettable tracks that should've been left on the cutting room floor. Lacking in single power, this results in an extensive blur of generic trap songs with the usual Migos bars we can expect about hoes, drugs, and iced out chains. Tracks like "Walk It Talk It" don't even reach this standard. Coupled with a lackadaisical
Drake feature, Quavo's staccato "walk it like I talk it" hook induces more headaches than head bobbing. The cloudy synths, cheap electric piano, and lackluster bass in "CC" are more resemblant of a cheesy 2000s sci-fi video game than a hip hop beat. "Gang Gang" is a nauseatingly safe pop-crossover track with a dime-a-dozen, medium/low-paced dance beat that is more suited for an Abercrombie commercial than a Migos album. "Flooded" features an ominous, dark piano-accented beat that is soiled by the eye-rolling "flooded flooded flooded flooded" hook handled by Offset that sounds like a microphone test that accidentally landed on a track.
Thankfully, among the slew of mediocre tracks, several standouts in the tracklist make this a bearable listen from top to bottom. From the beginning of the album, "Supastars" features a punchy, distorted, erratic bassline and glistening bells that compliment the trappy beat. The
Kanye West produced "BBO (Bad Bitches Only)" has one of the best beats on the whole project. Adorned with trumpets, orchestras, choirs, and an ominous middle-eastern sounding lead creeping into the verses, one of Migos' most abstract beats pays off for them handsomely. The aforementioned "Stir Fry" is a refreshing, fun break from the monotonous tracks surrounding it. "Open It Up" is a blaring symphonic epic complemented by an earworm of a hook from Quavo.
Post Malone lends a solemn hook over an unusually bleak beat for Migos on "Notice Me", and while Takeoff's verse with aggressive triplet flows talking about haters and Dracos sounds out of place, Quavo and Post steal the show with some of the sweetest melodies in the Migos discography, and results in one of their most unique tracks as a whole. The last 4 songs on the tracklist after this end the album on a calmer note, a nice ending to such a dense project. "Too Playa" features a great saxophone solo over much of the track, not too different in timbre from the autotuned inflections Migos themselves rap with. Tracks like "Made Men" and "Culture National Anthem - Outro" complete the southern flavor of the album with soulful, jazzy piano samples throughout, complemented by some of the group's most honest and passionate bars to date. The former even references
Ice Cube's "It Was A Good Day", fitting for the relaxed vibe of the track.
Despite being dismissed by many fans simply due to the length of the project, there are hidden gems in the tracklist that are worth spinning for all of 2018. It's clear, however, that Migos can no longer simply ride on their standard Atlanta trap sounds with no twists or turns (or meme-ability). Whether they can release top-charting singles from the more-of-the-same tracks that bloat the runtime of
Culture II or find success with their more risky material remains to be seen in an effort for another successful year for Migos.
