Aminé crashed the rap ranks two years ago with an offbeat tease called “Caroline,” which went quadruple-platinum and positioned him as an outsider star. His songs had a knowing wit and a kind of brightness that made him a beacon in an era of rap gloomcasters. But his music has become more vainglorious this summer, for what he's dubbed flexing season. His optimism has waned and he's turned his attention to expensive things—owning them, flaunting them, seeking comfort in them. His new “EP/LP/Mixtape/Album,” , the follow-up to 2017’s , was released on a whim, as if merely a trifle, another casual flex. (“Mixtapes are albums and albums are mixtapes. Niggas call they albums mixtapes cause if it flops, it’s an EP,” he joked in a promo video.) Regardless of classification, is a project about adjusting to a new class of rapper, how shifting tax brackets come with a new outlook on life. But in these songs of excess, Aminé’s feel-good music starts to lose some of the stained, lived-in quality that once made it so rich.