To hear Isaiah Rashad tell it, he’s both a junkie and a prophet, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, a porno-loving sex addict and a father who’s “grown up for my child’s sake.” Since his 2014 debut Cilvia Demo—an unsung classic, one of the best rap projects of the 2010s—he’s become a contradictory and complex character, one moment banging his chest and sending warning shots to “bitch-ass rappers” everywhere, the next sticking a gun in his mouth and relapsing on liquor and benzos. But Rashad renders even the most harrowing scenes with levity and warmth. He recounts his traumas and triumphs in largely the same register—his scratchy sing-song flow that slides and swings over beats that draw as much from ’90s neo-soul as they do from the annals of Southern rap. “We done went through a lot of emotions,” he says during an end-of-song outro on his new album, the aptly titled IT’S BEEN AWFUL. “So I guess, you know, I try to be a little lighthearted.”
Rashad has always been reticent to follow in the footsteps of his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. He was, after all, TDE’s lone Southern representative, all but anointed as the crew’s next breakout wunderkind. On 2016’s The Sun’s Tirade, Rashad detailed recent experiences of substance abuse and depression. Five years later, after disappearing from public view and hitting a few more rock bottoms, Rashad dropped The House is Burning, a pained portrait of a person fresh out of rehab and uneasily seeking a path toward redemption. While his star-in-waiting window may have passed, he was mostly sober and making some of the best music of his life. “I was dead and now I’m alive,” he said in the run-up to the album.
No score yet, be the first to add.
Five years after making this declaration, Rashad seems to have grown wary of the distinction between being dead and alive. “I’m cut from a sinful nature and I feel afflicted,” he raps on IT’S BEEN AWFUL opener “The New Sublime,” a song where he solicits prayers for his incarcerated sister, his mother, and himself, fearing that he might “relapse again” and sink to his “lowest.” For Rashad, death and suffering lurk behind all supposedly good things: getting high, falling in love, fame, wealth, even sobriety. If The House is Burning captured the joie de vivre of reclaiming your life after years of disassociation and detachment, IT’S BEEN AWFUL depicts the excruciating process of living with your eyes wide open, of holding up the mirror to your face and not looking away. This entails ruthless self-evaluations: the shameful memories, the self-loathing, the confusions and delusions and sufferings that refuse to disappear. More impressionist than linear storyteller, Rashad’s tales of struggle and survival still manage to coalesce into something like a thesis: He is both dead and alive, forever a mess of slithering contradictions.
Aside from the lead single “Same Sh!t” and closer “719 Freestyle,” in which Rashad playfully snaps over trap drums, IT’S BEEN AWFUL maintains a patient and shuffling pace, preferring contemplative tempos and muted textures for Rashad to ruminate on. He’s always been at ease maneuvering over R&B production; some of his best songs have been duets with his TDE colleague SZA. So too here: “Boy in Red” reaffirms the chemistry between the pair, and “Supaficial” and “GTKY” feature some of the smoothest hooks he’s ever sung. Helmed mostly by producers Keem the Cipher (KTC) and Julian Sintonia, the soundscape here is hazy and sample-driven, with pitched-down, syrupy percussion slinking around warm electric piano and brass. The vibey, occasionally anesthetized sound can begin to feel flat and mushy at times, but Rashad’s nimble flows and sharp songwriting keep the album in focus, even when the thematic and sonic heaviness feels like walking through the desert in a weighted vest.
