For a glorious moment in 2014, every other week seemed to bring a new viral hip-hop hit. It began with Bobby Shmurda, ended with Denzel Curry’s “Ultimate,” and O.T. Genasis and OG Maco happened somewhere in between. The songs themselves didn’t matter as much as the fact that everyone knew them, and everyone knew them because of the beloved six-second video app Vine (RIP).
Time hasn’t been kind to “Watch Me” or “Hit the Quan,” but if a one-hit wonder is remembered from this strange blip in time, let it be “Tuesday,” iLoveMakonnen’s anthem for service workers, freelance writers, and anybody else who hustles outside the confines of the normal 9-5. As hits go, it was unlikely, woozy and full of empty spaces, but it made perfect sense at 3 a.m. on a weeknight, when you and your friends were the last ones left in the club.
Makonnen was often associated with the “New Atlanta” of the mid-’00s, a wave of innovation that included everyone from Migos and Young Thug to EarthGang. Most of these artists had nothing in common with each other save for their city, but they became ambassadors for their hometown's cultural riches to the rest of the world. Atlanta is currently the fourth fastest-growing city in the country, with 600,000 new residents in the last decade, but Makonnen hasn’t quite benefited from his city’s gold rush; once the club goes up, it must come down. M3 is something of a reintroduction for Makonnen, who has not released a full-length project on a major label since 2016’s Drink More Water 6.
There’s a reason for that, one that goes beyond the normal label troubles that tend to plague rappers who seemingly emerge from nowhere. After he came out as gay on Twitter in early 2017, many of Makonnen’s previous collaborators went quiet; some, like Migos, were a little too vocal. In the lead-up to M3, Makonnen has said he feels unsupported by the hip-hop community at large due to his sexuality, even calling out Gucci Mane, the new EP’s lone guest, for not sufficiently promoting the record. At best, the industry hasn’t known what to do with Makonnen; at worst, it has actively hindered his career. It’s telling that fellow ATLien Young Thug has been celebrated for queering his wardrobe, while Makonnen has been shut out for actually being queer.
But Makonnen hasn’t been entirely absent. In the past year, he’s released two tracks with Lil Peep, “Sunlight on Your Skin” and “I’ve Been Waiting,” the latter of which features Fall Out Boy and is Makonnen’s first charting single since “Tuesday.” “I’ve Been Waiting” is perhaps the most conventional pop song of Makonnen’s career—I heard it playing a few weeks ago in a Best Buy while I considered buying AirPods—but it’s not representative of M3. “Liquid Supply Daily,” a chilled-out, guitar-driven love song, is the only other glimpse we get of this family-friendly version of Makonnen.
Elsewhere on the EP, he reverts to his more rap-intensive side, which was never his strongest. The only appearance from former comrade Drake is in the form of Tay Keith’s producer tag, which hangs uneasily over the EP’s worst track, “Money Fiend.” The song’s primary subject—flipping, selling, stacking, repeat—is one that Makonnen has put a distinctive twist on in the past. He even manages it elsewhere on this EP, like on “Shoot Shoot,” when he calls his AK-47 “cute” and compares it to a puppy sitting on his lap. But on “Money Fiend,” it feels tired and trite. Maybe it’s just Lil Peep’s influence rubbing off, but the best lines on M3 are about emotional anguish and getting fucked up to forget, like the mournfully turnt “Drunk on Saturday.” He is still a vital and strange voice, if only someone would make more room for it.
Makonnen helped reignite his city’s creative identity like few others and showed outsider artists a path to the mainstream. As repayment, he’s been left behind in the dust of condos and co-working spaces, exploited by the industry around him, and rejected by a genre that has much more work to do when it comes to sexuality and masculinity. M3 is somewhere between Straw-Ber-Rita dreams and champagne reality, but there’s a taste of the pop star Makonnen could be if the culture would only catch up to him.
