Gunna - Drip or Drown 2

Gunna
Drip or Drown 2
2019
Spotify

Mumble rap has always been a term that is meant to demean the genre. The idea of rappers letting word soup spill out of their mouth over trap beats is just to far of a road for some people. It seemed like this style was taking a bit of a break recently as trap becomes more mainstream, the more mushmouthed rappers fall by the wayside. That's what makes this new record from Gunna feel almost like a throwback. The Atlanta rapper is signed to Young Thug's label, which is clear with the trap experimentation going on here. With a lot of trap music you get into big bombastic sounds, bass cranked up and everyone is ready to party. That is certainly not the case here. Every song is syrupy and thick with Gunna trying to imbue every second with emotion. The problem with Gunna is He isn't doing anything different from performers like Lil Uzi Vert and other emo-trap guys. His style therefore feels like it is chasing something that has left, not forging new territory. Drip of Drown 2 ends up feeling extremely one note, with the same song pattern emerging track after track. When his voice isn't buried under effects it still sounds like five voices all blending together to create something that is almost painful to listen to. You can't get his meaning, you can't understand his message and it just feels like someone when in the booth for four hours on each track and this is the result.

"Speed It Up" is a perfect example of this style of production. The beat is thick and hearing it in your earphones makes you perk up, but then nothing changes and Gunna just says "speed it up" 500 times. This is people getting in the studio and letting things just happen, not songs crafted and thought about for a long time. You realize this in a big way when Young Thug features on "3 Headed Snake". His vocal prowess and humor add some lightness to the track while Gunna just pulls everything to a screeching halt. It feels like Gunna keeps his eyes closed throughout this whole album, which would be fine if He was doing anything even relatively new. "On A Mountain" sounds at times with it's harpsichord based beat that Gunna went on some distant peak and wrote these lyrics, but then He ends up just rhyming the same things with "mountain" over and over again. The album is only 48 minutes but feels like it drones on for hours. Not enough creativity and not enough skill to make this boring album any more than that. There has been a lot of hype around Gunna and especially this release but wow is it a snooze, avoid.

3.0 out of 10