The descriptor “mumble rap” is mostly used disparagingly about a new generation of dead-eyed MCs, but 21 Savage turns monotony into a virtue. There is a slight uptick in vocal musicality compared with his previous work, particularly on the Drakeian track Out vor the Night, but for the most part the Atlantan star continues with his dominant voice: a supremely jaded cadence where each line pitches slightly downwards at the end, suggesting a head that can never be held high.
He has plenty of average lines – almost as offensive as the rightly controversial “Jewish money” lyric in ASMR is the weakness of “you get burned like toast” as a simile – but his catchy flows always make him magnetic, especially when paired with universally brilliant production from Metro Boomin, Kid Hazel and others. There is slow, glistening Miami bass on A&T, chopped-up soul on A Lot, sad synth chords on Pad Lock. And there are some powerful, pithy lyrics: “Fuck 40 acres and a mule / They got 50 racks and a brand new Sig” bleakly sums up how the US has failed its black citizens since the end of slavery.
His brother and friends were killed growing up, and Savage himself was shot six times. This violence continues to spill into his tracks, whether comically – threatening to murder someone’s goldfish and bragging that his AK47 previously belonged to Osama bin Laden – or movingly, as on Monster where he admits “all the money in the world won’t stop no cry”. By constantly rapping about firearms even with a few years of success under his belt, you could argue that he’s leveraging the violence of his earlier life to titillate listeners. But given the scale of his trauma, his lyrical obsession feels sadly symptomatic. Savage remains trapped, doomed to fetishise the weapons that nearly killed him and revisit his trauma as a way to slowly process it. Psychologists could also get a lot of mileage from how Savage keeps women objectified and at arm’s length – “I slept on my back just so I ain’t have to cuddle” – and seems chiefly attracted to those who are cheating on their partners.
The album title suggests he is starting to move on, and Letter 2 My Momma sees him renounce showy jewellery and affirm his loyalty to his three children. But the power in Savage’s music still lies in the gulf between what he is expected to feel and what he actually does: that brilliant vocal cadence suggests he is surveying the cars and girls of his new life with numbed distance, even disgust.
