Metro Boomin has been an artist to watch for a few years now: a trap producer who takes a maximalist approach to beat-making -a quality which is not commonly associated with trap as a genre- and found critical and commercial success with the knockout album Heroes and Villains, a soaring orchestra-supported album with a laundry list of features. I am starting off this review by pointing out how good Metro’s previous studio album is because I am stumped at finding something good about this new album to open this review with. We Don’t Trust You is largely boring and safe: an utterly underwhelming audio experience that left me in a daze where I was struggling to find positive aspects to return to, bar one shimmering moment of clarity when Kendrick Lamar steals the entire album out from under everyone.
The production on this album is slimmed down compared to Metro’s previous work, relying on synth beats and sampling to create something more familiar and less bombastic. The approach is much more traditional, I suppose. Songs like ‘We Don’t Trust You’ and ‘Fried (She a Vibe)’ are familiar but barely memorable from the sea of trap music we have seen over the years. Moments where Metro’s creativity reappears are few and far between. ‘GTA’ is one of my favourites from the album. A quaking synth sets the bassline and is accentuated by a reverberated piano lick that finds the right balance between the album's slimmer production and the style Metro became known for. However, this approach is not always a benefit for the album. ‘Type Shit’ fails in every way, trying to make church bells a production motif for the song, only to become incredibly obnoxious, subsequently replaced by a snooze-inducing instrumental track for the rest of the song. Even when you think you are safe from these annoying church bells, praying they won’t return for the rest of the song, they return- solely to annoy me, I presume. This track is easily my least favourite and feels like the sort of song a teenager in their bedroom would produce on their freshly installed copy of Ableton.
Now we come to the much more glaring issue with this album, whose name I have avoided so far. After all, this is a collaborative album; it’s not just Metro steering this sinking ship. The other captain asleep at the wheel is Future; an artist who at no time in his career instilled in me a sense that he is a creative frontrunner of the genre. As the figurehead of the era of SoundCloud rappers, I have never found a reason to like his music in a genre that has often floundered to establish itself amongst contemporary sub-genres. He is certainly not the sort of vocalist you want at the centre of an album's performance. Lyrically, he is uninteresting, relying on tired and outdated tropes of the trap genre, failing to find anything new to say, and rarely offering a coherent vision for any single song's lyrics. His flow and performances are one-note, which certainly does not assist the already stale production of this album. This isn’t to say he doesn’t have a place in this album; the tone of his performance can be quite an interesting addition when it's not thrust to the centre.
Proof of this comes from my favourite track on the album, ‘Like That.’ Metro’s production feels much more energetic, utilising the classic Eazy-Duz-It “He was once a thug…” sample- an infectious 80’s melodic synth that offers some distraction if you’re getting sick of Future’s performance on this track. It also pulls from some of the heavier bass synths that Metro utilised on Heroes and Villains. All of this builds to that Kendrick feature that set the internet ablaze. It truly is something notable when a single feature can outshine every other moment on an album. Kendrick comes screeching in with the energy you wished was somewhere within the rest of the album. The song’s sinister tone prepares for the toxicity Kendrick is about to spit at J. Cole and Drake. Lyrically, Kendrick is raining down hit after hit as always: funny, smart and full of wordplay, with lyrics that you’ll be repeating to yourself and grinning from ear to ear; “Prince outlived Mike Jack” is the standout bar. His performance is dynamic and animated, a reminder of how uninteresting the rest of the album is. This is strange because this song seems to get the balance right, treating Future as supplementary to the production and the feature, which works in his and the song's favour.
My review of this album has not mentioned the fact that this is essentially part one of a two-part collaboration with Future. The second part, We Still Don’t Trust You (I promise I’m not kidding) was released on April 12th and while I am unlikely to do a full review of it, the album has similar issues. This album feels like it was doomed from the concept. Metro Boomin’s slimmed-down trap album with Future as the lead performance, and a surprising lack of features, is a disastrous premise for an album. I’ll probably come back to ‘Like That’ frequently, but I feel comfortable writing off the rest of this album for good.
edited by Cormac Nugent
image pitchfork