The Forever Story in Bloomington, MN

Four years passed between Atlanta rapper and
Dreamville
affiliate
JID
's critically fawned-over 2018 album
DiCaprio 2
and its proper follow-up,
The Forever Story
. Those years (an interminable amount of time between releases by commercial rap standards, even with
showing up as a featured artist on multiple tracks and firing off a joint mixtape with
EarthGang
and
Spillage Village
in 2020) have culminated in an even sharper, more musically dense articulation of
's profound talents with
. The album is packed with nonstop displays of technical ability, complex wordplay, inventive use of beat switches, unpredictable shifts in flow and delivery, and forthright expression of experiences both personal and culturally shared.
's stylistic range covers straightforward boom-bap steadiness as he ruminates on growing up poor on "Crack Sandwich," slippery flows over soul samples and anxious trap hi-hats on the
21 Savage
-assisted "Surround Sound," interstellar jazz funk touches on "Stars," and even an unexpectedly beautiful collision of heavy synthesizer sequences and gospel harmonies on closing track "Lauder Too." The impressive list of contributors to
includes production work from
Thundercat
,
James Blake
Kaytranda
, and others, while guest performances from
Lil Durk
Kenny Mason
Ari Lennox
Lil Wayne
, and several others keep the already angular flow of the record moving along at a head-spinning rate. With
turns in an album every bit as ambitious and monumental as the two solo studio outings that preceded it, growing in terms of technical talent while also opening up more lyrically. ~ Fred Thomas