By Alex Eubanks
After I saw the tracklist, I was damn-near terrified.
With 24 tracks clocking in at 106 minutes, Culture 2 is an album that runs longer than most movies do. Some of the tracks last longer than five minutes apiece.
After I listened to the full tracklist, I found much of my fears were justified as I encountered an eternity of repetitive music grounded in nothing but past stardom.
Following the release of their stellar Culture album, Migos went from leading the Atlanta trap scene to unavoidable stars. Together, they came out with seven features as a group and dropped the Quality Control label tape.
Quavo also put in 14 guest appearances of his own and collabed with Travis Scott for the mediocre Huncho Jack tape.
Offset came through with eight features and his own collab album with 21 Savage and Metro Boomin all while Takeoff got left off Bad and Boujee.
After this run of saturating the mainstream with as much Migos as it could handle, the group was finally ready to return with a new album to try to continue their successful run following the underwhelming lead singles “Motorsport” and “Supastars,” as well as “Stir Fry,” which was much better than the latter tracks.
One of my biggest fears heading into this album was that the members of Migos had come through with too much music in 2017, that their sound had lost its power and that what made them sound so fun and energetic would take a dip in quality.
Culture 2 is a massive step down from its predecessor and it shows throughout the album, with its length killing any momentum the album builds.
Frankly, Quavo sounds like he’s run out of ideas despite being Migos’ resident hookman. It shows as the choruses throughout the album are flat and don’t continue the groups legacy.
The only hooks that really stood out were the singles and guest tracks.
Furthermore, “Open it Up” is just a “Deadz” clone with the beats and the vocal performances sounding nearly the same.
While the album is extremely bland, there are moments which bring back the old Migos charm.
“Stir Fry,” “CC,” “White Sand,” “Flooded,” “Too Playa” and “Auto Pilot” are all bangers.
Outside of those six, the other 18 are mediocre and make the album feel overstuffed.
The features also aren’t as good as the first Culture, which is really unfortunate. With the exception of Gucci Mane, 2 Chainz, Ty Dolla $ign (I’m as surprised as you are) and Travis Scott the features are primarily duds.
Plus, there are some bad moments on this album that I didn’t even think Migos were capable of.
Quavo tries his hand at impressions a few times and they are atrocious. The Daft Punk impression on the bridge of “Too Much Jewelry” is something I would never have imagined Quavo attempting in a fever dream.
Somehow it isn’t even the most surprising impression Quavo tries as he genuinely layers his voice with an absurd amount of autotune and inserts it into the background of “Top Down on Da NAWF,” to the point where he sounds like he’s trying to do an impression of Thom Yorke on Kid A.
The song “Gang Gang” is also a huge lowlight, as I still have no idea what the song is supposed to be about.
Takeoff begins the track as if it’s going to be a love song then transitions midsong into typical braggadocious bars, including one really questionable “After my show we put hoes in a chokehold” line and too many forced rhymes.
There’s also a constant, random humming that either Quavo or Offset does that’s just them pretending to be Travis Scott pretending to be Kid Cudi and it gets incredibly annoying.
This album is too long for it to have any hope of being as good as Migos’ previous work.
They’re running out of ideas and it’s starting to show. It might do them some good to take a few months off from doing guest appearances and try to refocus on their own music.
There isn’t a track on here besides the singles and the Drake track that I could really imagine being a radio hit, and that matters for Migos as they’ve evolved into trap superstars, for better or worse.
3/5 Stars
The Crow’s Nest rates albums between one and five stars, with five stars being the highest possible score.
Header photo courtesy of Capitol Records
