It’s become something of a cliché to complain about the streaming-era trend of dropping bloated albums ostensibly designed to game the charts. But NLE Choppa’s Cottonwood 2 doesn’t quite justify its one-hour-plus runtime, let alone the 100-minute deluxe edition that dropped three days later. The Memphis rapper at least has the good sense to use the time to try out a series of different stylistic conceits across the album’s 31 tracks. “It’s a lot to digest,” Choppa admits on “Cold Game,” and he’s not wrong.
Perhaps the most interesting and befitting of Choppa’s talents are the album’s dips into the Jersey club sound, which is typified by a hyper-fast drumbeat and often colorful sample choices. The style is best exemplified by two recent releases, Cash Cobain and Chow Lee’s 2 Slizzy 2 Sexy and Bandmanrill’s Club Godfather, on which Choppa appeared as a guest. There are four out-and-out Jersey club tracks on Cottonwood 2, the finest of which is “Do It Again,” a somewhat muted rendition that nonetheless manages to still be kinetic.
Choppa is capable of an extremely quick delivery that’s well-suited to the sprinting BPMs of Jersey club. However, on some of the other three songs in this vein—“Home,” “Round & Round,” and “Shake It”—he works against the beat and croons languidly or explores forlorn thematic territory, to counterintuitive effect. Still, one wonders what a whole project featuring the young rapper riffing atop these kinds of juiced-up beats might sound like.
But Choppa isn’t interested in that kind of continuity. He turns to drill, a kind of variation on Jersey club, on tracks like “Envy” and “Dope,” but these register as more obvious trend-chasing than those other songs, especially on the gimmicky “In the UK,” a cartoonish excuse to allow him to say “bruv.” He finds more fruitful ground when he dabbles in genres that are closer to his Tennessee roots: Choppa’s swings toward bounce and crunk on “Ain’t Gonna Answer” and “Stomp Em Out,” respectively, are both satisfying.
Some of the songs here are obviously extraneous, like “Champions,” which features canned horns and creaky, faux-inspirational lyrics seemingly designed for basketball stadiums (even Choppa himself sounds bored). And not only does the vapid “Mo Up Front” find the MC chanting in demand of more money, the track underlines his most simplistic and reductive tendencies as a writer, particularly when he equates needing more money “up front” with a woman’s “front.”
There’s something about Choppa’s vocal delivery that comes across deathly serious and can make Cottonwood 2 feel one-dimensional in its emotional scope. Even when he’s joking, as on the goofy “Automobooty” or with lines like “all coochies matter” or “asking God why I want to fuck every bitch,” he comes off like he’s swearing an oath. Beyond charged, virtuosic spitting, though, there are other things that speak to Choppa’s talents as a rapper: “Thug It Out” and “Pretty Brown Eyes” find the wunderkind tempering his energy, modulating his tone without flattening it. Would that he applied that approach to the album’s sprawl and structure too.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
