DS4EVER in Bloomington, MN

The follow-up to 2020's
WUNNA
,
DS4Ever
occupies the same grey area as
Chief Keef
's
Bang 3
and
Lil Baby
Harder Than Ever
, being both
Gunna
's third studio album and the fourth instalment in his formative
Drip Season
(DS) series of mixtapes. While its predecessor honed the spacey "Skybox" soundscapes of the rapper's late-2010s output,
DS4
pulls back to the more generalized approach of his earlier work. This time, the drums come with a little more punch, with rhythms urged forward by frantic beeps and whomping 808s. There's plenty to enjoy here. The relentlessly flowing "South to West" is tinged with a horizon-gazing importance, opening track "Private Island" catches a sleek melodic pocket, and the
Young Pluto
back-to-back of "Too Easy" is like a "2.0" of
Future
's already-excellent "Riding Strikers." A weirdly comedic angle appears in some of
's writing here and makes for a refreshing surprise, given the rapper's distant, money-driven persona. "Pushin P" -- which has already done the rounds on the meme circuit -- sees
Thugger
rattle through the "P" section of the dictionary to deliver one of the year's most bizarrely entertaining anthems. After tunnelling into a very specific avenue for
takes a more general approach, pulling in the likes of
Drake
, and
Young Thug
for a string of cycling hits. ~ David Crone