Chris Crack finds comfort in the chaos of non-sequiturs. The Chicago rapper’s songs can jump from wry life-isms to boasts about his status within his hometown to stories of falling in love in bougie grocery stores with no warning. This description may feel erratic, but Crack’s charisma and voice—which sounds like a frayed nerve ending come to life—have a strong gravitational pull. It’s the equivalent of switching between different TV shows with the same actor; the stories might not be the same, but the leading face is always recognizable. “Celebrate Everything Until Further Notice,” a song near the middle of his latest album Growthfully Developed, features a quick passage that neatly sums up his style and humor: “I got thoughts that just scatter my mind/It’s why my hair nappy.”
Surrendering yourself to the whims of a darting mind can be a double-edged sword, and it’s an issue Crack has grappled with in the past. But Growthfully Developed maintains the delicate balance of fresh and familiar as well as any of the dozen projects he’s released in the last three years. In fact, Crack and his on-hand producers are more prone to experiment, adding flourishes to his cherished mid-tempo soul loops. Producers MelloMatt and Turk Money retrofit “Chicago Don’t Make Industry Plants” with booming 808s that grant the underlying vocal samples the pomp of stadium rap; Sledgren does the same with “Pussy Better When You Eat It First.” Both “Uknowwhereihadderat” and “Ate Ball in My Sock” are so plush they wouldn’t sound out of place on a Jeremih or Summer Walker album. They fit well next to the drumless loops and smoldering boom-bap on display, and Crack corrals these disparate beats with ease.
Crack’s music has always been animated and bursting with color, and his writing on Developed is no exception. He begins “Therapy Don’t Work, Try Drugs” with an anecdote about eating hibachi for three nights in a row that leads to the strip club, life advice, and reminiscing on days when you had to ask for a parent’s permission to play with friends. Other distinct scenes race by while leaving an impression—a game of Loteria played over Friendsgiving dinner at the end of “Illuminati Phone Numbers,” demons faced down in a pair of Asics sneakers on “A Blunt Forced This Trauma.” But he’s just as likely to spend songs walking listeners through his unlikely path to success, as he does in the first few seconds of “Jordan Never Did That Move.” Topics change mid-track, but none of them feel adrift or aimless, which is the ultimate method to Crack’s madness.
For all the jokes and acid hurled at haters, there’s a sense of longing across Developed not present on his other projects. Crack is exhaustingly prolific, and a good share of this album’s chest-beating stems as much from a general sense of underappreciation as it does from feelings toward any particular person. When he croons “I’ve been doing this half my life” on “Nine 2 Fives Make You Fake,” it lands with a sense of both frustration and release, a positive and negative affirmation amplifying each other in real time. The stakes feel higher here than they did on last year’s Fool’s Gold debut Might Delete Later, which inflates the album’s sense of purpose.
Said purpose wouldn’t mean as much if the songs weren’t worth revisiting. Thankfully, Crack remains one of the funniest and most thoughtful rappers working today. The formula he’s been tinkering with for the last four years has produced the breeziest and most eclectic album in his catalog since 2020’s White People Love Algorithms. “You can’t put me in no box. I want to be remembered as the trillest and as the guy who didn’t fold,” he said in a recent interview. It’s hard to predict where he’ll end up next, but chances are, Crack will get a reaction wherever he lands.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this review incorrectly indicated that Cutta and Sledgren produced “Chicago Don’t Make Industry Plants” and “Pussy Better When You Eat It First.” The former track was produced by MelloMatt and Turk Money, while Sledgren produced the latter song.
