Before Quavo was a huncho, he was a doubter. “How long you think we gonna last?” the Migos member asked a journalist in 2014. The question feels quaint in a world where politicians dab and Beyoncé raps about Pateks and Lamborghinis. But that lasting whiplash, that nagging proximity to life before fame, is the essential Migos experience. Their tagline, “YRN,” is a boast, a thanksgiving, and a punchline all at once: Young, wealthy, and black? In America? Shit, I’d have my doubts too.
Their two blockbuster albums, 2017’s Culture and 2018’s Culture II, downplayed that sense of culture shock by framing the group’s rise as a long-awaited coronation. But for Offset, the jet lag hasn’t worn off. Tinged with paranoia, shame, and anxiety, his debut solo album Father of 4 depicts the murkier side of the group’s ascent. Though it’s ultimately undermined by its inertia and lack of focus, the record offers glimpses of Offset as a compelling storyteller and bluesman.
In public and private, Offset has had the rockiest ride of all the Migos. From his untimely jail bids to his stormy courtship, marriage, and separation from Cardi B, he’s felt the white-hot intensity of the spotlight and the coldness of its absence. This turbulence has come to define his style, the tortured menace to Quavo’s glossy cool and Takeoff’s stoned zen. Rapped in choppy barks, his flexes shine and cast shadows, invoking losses alongside the gains. “I bring that pain and that rough side that some people are scared to go on,” he’s summarized. Dovetailing with his admiration of Cardi, who excels at navigating fame, this newfound confidence has emboldened him to open up.
Father of 4 is, at best, a proof of concept. Offset is so naturally guarded and private that he approaches his life nervously and obliquely. The title track, an apology to his four children by four women, is elusive and compressed. As he mentions his kids by name, he’s so audibly uncomfortable it feels like he’s on death row. He uses Auto-Tune to make his voice wobble and fizzle and ends up somewhere between a yelp and a moan. His apology to his daughter Kalea is so concise it’s vivid. “In the pen when she pushed you out,” he says of her birth. This split-screen storytelling, always emphasizing distance and closeness, allows him to trade linear narrative for a montage. He toggles between images so abruptly that you feel the spaces between them.
That jerkiness is Offset’s default mode. Songs like “Red Room” and “How Did I Get Here” have the unsettling discontinuity of the memory elevator in Inception. The deeper he goes, the more his memories bleed into each other. “How I’m supposed to take it?/Niggas dyin ‘round the same time I had a baby,” Offset raps. When done right, that juxtaposition of success and pain adds ballast to his flexes, as on his Cardi tribute “Don’t Lose Me.” Alluding to Cardi’s storied self-reliance, he recalls his early appreciation of her wrist. “First time I seen the Patek glisten/They did not believe the vision,” he coos with satisfaction. He sounds so dismayed at his loss you get the sense that he too was a nonbeliever.
When Offset isn’t as focused, the record feels directionless. “North Star” shifts from aimless verses about Offset’s life on the north side of Atlanta to a painfully goofy Cee-Lo feature about being the North Star. “Legacy” sounds like a Without Warning outtake and has a distracting amount of filler. “I’m from the jungle, I’m an animal,” Offset raps as if he’s explaining a failed round of charades. The familiarity of many of the rhyme schemes and hooks sinks otherwise interesting verses. Offset tends to build songs line by line, which is great for finding the unique sounds and images that Migos thrives on (“Raindrops/Drop tops”), but not as conducive to the introspection that the record strives for. For every line about passing on money to his kids or fixing his broken family, there’s three that slip into overdone clichés: hopping out the Lamb, chugging lean, flashing the Piguet. Offset takes the stage alone, but he still moves like Migos.
It doesn’t help that the production is static too. While Marquee producers Metro Boomin and Southside provide the bulk of the beats, they feel reined in. Instead of the eerie guitar loops, wild synth fills, and organ arpeggios of their past work, the default here is bass-heavy tracks with muted chords and lone snare strikes. This gives Offset plenty of space to scrawl in his looping verses, but he generally sounds far too comfortable. The Quavo-featuring “On Fleek” is so on-brand it hurts. “Clout” squanders the optics of Cardi and Offset collaborating post-breakup for generic jabs at attention-seekers.
Father of 4 ultimately works as a solo outing because Offset is such a force of nature, but it’s too often cautious where it could be candid, or dull where it should be sharp. Still, the record is a progression for Offset and for Migos. Fueling the group’s trademark excess is a serious distrust of the carceral state and celebrity, a tension that can only intensify as they climb the charts recounting the lives they left behind. When that dissonance is given proper context, their rags to riches tales feel like vibrant portraits more than gilded myths.
