Since his breakout mixtapes in the mid-2010s, his sputtering, breathless flow has been fluttering on beats like the texture of good ASMR. His nasal tone is a fine wine pairing for southern trap and heavy hits of gospel and hero-worship. Just take “Surround Sound”, the standout single from his previous masterstroke The Forever Story, as it directly lifted the iconic beat from Mos Def’s “Ms. Fat Booty”. No matter the ability or elevated ear he brings to a track, he always makes room for giving flowers to his forebearers.
On the jagged road to heaven, JID is beset on all sides by questions of love, community obligation, and faith; not atypical for a rapper of his success to bring up at this point in his career. Where JID supplies his own touch to the subject matter is in the small army of features and collaborators he lifts with himself on God Does Like Ugly. Friends and former roommates Earthgang, Vince Staples, a currently hotter-than-Hell Clipse, Don Toliver, and more are fathered into the answers he finds, or looks for. And he’s a father now, too, as the closing victory lap “For Keeps” reveals: impressive family already.
What immediately clicks on his newest record here, is that
he’s just cracked the code on how to write a great track, as one would
hope over a decade in. Choruses catch, he has natural chemistry with
every feature, and he changes his flow so much he almost has chemistry
simply by himself. Clipse is the obvious standout from features,
carrying over the galactic success of this year’s Let God Sort Em Out
into a JID-sized bite; Pusha T rapping “I brought white to my hood,
shit, I gentrified,” was the record’s second-best dopamine rush. The
first being a cameo from Westside Gunn adlibbing the record from the
ether on the snarling opener “YouUgly”. If the features were any more
high-profile, it would be a harkening to the early-2010s output of a
certain Chicago rapper with a directional name I can’t remember. Too bad
he died.
From the gospel grandeur of “Glory” and “For Keeps”, to the
dynamic use of voice across tracks like “Wholeheartedly” and “Of Blue”, there are more than a few productive connections to that late, great
whatever-his-name; it gets to a point where I may as well just pretend
JID made Graduation and call it a day. But JID did make God Does Like Ugly,
not so much a highwater mark for his own career as it is another high
mark relative to every other living, breathing rapper around him. That
counts for something.
If there’s an innovation to JID’s sound and style here,
it’s present in the multi-phased, emotional epic “Of Blue”, which
oscillates between dour choral sections and blues sample chops until it
breaks under its own weight. JID is a flawless machine atop it, emotive
and relentless, overwhelming and fundamentally simple. It’s a
breathtaking track that highlights why JID works while a host of white
dreadheads praying to Marshall Mathers don’t. Flash, flow, or not, JID
would be a storyteller regardless. The panache, the beats, the features,
it’s all just windowdressing for a soul built for worthwhile words.
