Like much of Dope Don’t Sell Itself, it feels like an unfinished sketch. Longstanding Atlanta stalwart FKi 1st turns the first two, saccharine bounces into a thundering brew of 808s and distorted synths 2 Chainz’s chorus is a nursery rhyme-like earworm, and yet it’s baffling that the song stops at a minute and a half.

And “Neighbors Know My Name” contains a flip of D4L’s “Laffy Taffy” that’s so brilliant, it’s inconceivable that no one had done it before.

There are a few bright spots: lead single “Million Dollars Worth of Game,” a perfect team-up with 42 Dugg, and featuring a beat that sounds like a tea kettle about to explode, is pure 2 Chainz gold: “I sold green, sold white, sold lyrics/Courtside, watching the Hawks play the Pistons!” His horn-filled collaboration with the embattled YoungBoy Never Broke Again, “10 Bracelets,” is triumphant and anthemic. Missing in all of this is anything memorable from 2 Chainz himself, just recycled lines on dope dealing and big cars, with little of the astounding zaniness or trenchant political awareness and introspection that make his verses feel essential. There’s a rote stop-the-violence track (complete with a chorus from Lil Durk, who probably shouldn’t be the one singing about the senselessness of rappers dying), and a run-of-the-mill sex song featuring Jacquees that’s inexplicably the album’s closer.

“Pop Music,” featuring Moneybagg Yo, is boilerplate strip club fodder, while the buoyant but just passable Roddy Ricch feature “Outstanding” could appear on anyone’s album. But they’re more like templates than novel creations, far from his days of sampling Hall & Oates or trading verses with Kendrick Lamar over a Pharrell beat seemingly constructed from cutlery and trash cans. The songs here are serviceable, thanks to 2 Chainz’s ear and charisma. Dope Don’t Sell Itself feels like a half-hearted attempt to return to basics-but, as 2 Chainz should know, shifting the culture is a Herculean task, and it sounds like he doesn’t have the strength or hunger to do it anymore. His last hit came in 2017 (“ It’s a Vibe”), and 2020’s So Help Me God!, despite features with everyone from Kanye West to Lil Uzi Vert, produced the lowest sales of his career. Now in his 40s, posting more on Instagram about his family than the club, 2 Chainz is at a creative and commercial crossroads. A brisk 12 songs, it plays more like a mixtape of throwaways, a collection of forgettable, though occasionally great, bangers with of-the-moment features and total disregard for cohesion or risk. Dope Don’t Sell Itself, his seventh studio album, is the first one that feels predictable.

Fast forward to 2022, and 2 Chainz is now playing catch up.

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