While Destroy Lonely’s second studio album, Love Lasts Forever, has been touted as a boundary-defining artistic statement, it succumbs to all of the familiar pitfalls of contemporary hip-hop: a bloated tracklist, thoughtless sequencing, poor mixing, and lazy songwriting. “I’ve been flexin’ for 22 years and I ain’t stoppin’ now,” the Atanta rapper predictably boasts on the not-so-subtly titled “About Money.”
A skilled MC should be able to imbue even the most mumbled inanities with some energy or wit. Unfortunately, even when Lonely’s backed by a mammoth-sounding beat, as on the towering “Luv 4 Ya,” it does little to elevate the mood. When you strip down a track like “Take a Trip,” all that’s left is overly Auto-Tuned vocals and limp bars like “Shawty bad and she wetter than a boat/I got a bag, fuck it, I got cash to blow.” In Lonely’s hands, the act of spending money on designer brands and having sex with models sounds like a chore.
Love Lasts Forever fails to carve out a distinct lane for itself. The album’s few bright spots, such as the stupidly catchy, Houston-influenced “Syrup Sippin’,” feel like songs anyone else could have made, barely distinguishable from Lonely and his stable of producers’ past work.
Abandoning the swirling, crunchy guitar riffs of last year’s If Looks Could Kill, Lonely has opted for trap and EDM-esque tracks, featuring heavy 808 kicks and sparkling synths but offering little in the way of personality. The songs on Love Lasts Forever plod along to looping drum patterns and booming bass drops that lose their luster by the album’s uneventful second half.
While there are few outright duds across the album’s 21 tracks, Love Lasts Forever has the weakest ratio of quality material on a Destroy Lonely release to date. It even manages to botch a collaboration with the usually reliable Ken Carson with horrendous mastering. The track serves as a fitting closer for an album that feels blatantly indifferent.
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