Still trying to capture the lightning of his star-making debut, the Compton rapper’s latest is an attempted return to form that plays it far too safe.
Roddy Ricch is stuck in limbo. Fueled by a bevy of hooks, the 24-year-old Compton artist’s 2019 debut, Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial, propelled him to a stratosphere of rap superstardom not seen since 50 Cent’s mammoth debut. The record was slightly personal but mostly familiar, showcasing the infectious melodies of the era’s mainstream rap, proof that the sound of mid-2010s Atlanta had spread across state lines. On his 2021 follow-up, LIVE LIFE FAST, he struggled to recapture that lightning in a bottle. Instead of continuing to add his unique spin to a sound that was being regurgitated everywhere, he faded into the background. Feed Tha Streets III, his latest project, is supposed to be a return to form, but it suffers from the anxiety of trying to conform to fan expectations and subdues his best traits.
The game plan: Strip away the glitz and glamor of his prior studio album and retreat to the bare-bones approach of his mixtapes. It’s a good idea in theory, but the problem with Roddy’s music lately isn’t that he’s trying to accomplish too much—it’s that the melodies and beats have become so anonymous that if you’re not paying attention, you’ll forget whose song you’re listening to. “Blue Cheese” is a dry impression of a pumped-up Young Thug song—down to the woo hoos—that falls flat without any identifiable eccentricities to get stuck in your head. The repetitive ad-libs on “Twin” (“Across the street from my hotel”) only get more tiresome as he keeps going. Has Roddy been hit with a neuralyzer? At the peak of his powers, he had a knack for stringing together lines with ease, turning simple concepts into full-blown hits with slight vocal twitches and emotive singing. On Feed Tha Streets III, he seems to have forgotten how.
When Roddy raises the energy, it’s a reminder of how electric his voice can be. Single “Aston Martin Truck” is buoyed by pitch and tempo variations that keep things interesting the whole ride. When he wails “My mama said she see the demons on me/So I gotta stay outta her way” on “Get Swept,” his frank delivery stands out, even if it doesn’t lead anywhere. These jumps in intensity are the shots of espresso the album needs. But they aren’t enough. Maybe a Mustard feature could have broken up the formulaic production choices: If the hi-hats or acoustic guitar on “Favor for a Favor” had an inkling more imagination to meld with the croons, the song could morph from fine to good.
When Roddy finds a topic that doesn’t feel like just a backdrop to a celebratory Instagram post, he can express a sense of urgency, like when he lays out how he wants his son’s childhood to be different from his own on closer “Letter to My Son.” Looking inward and getting personal isn’t the only way to move forward, but he’ll need some semblance of depth to separate his music from all the other rappers jockeying for the top spot on Apple Music’s Rap Life playlist. At least LIVE LIFE FAST made a few efforts to diversify his sound. On Feed Tha Streets III, Roddy sounds so worried about stumbling that he ends up moving at a snail’s pace.
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