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A course correction after the wild genre experimentation of last year’s Pink Tape, Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake 2 isn’t so much an evolution of 2020’s Eternal Atake as it is a watered-down rehash of it. Gone are the personality, ambition, and world-building visions that defined those previous two albums, replaced with 16 tracks’ worth of disjointed flows, bland beats, and shaky vocal performances.

In theory, a sequel like this should be a cakewalk: a snappy collection of vaguely poppy, energetic crowd-pleasers with just enough drill influence to still qualify as rap. In other words, Uzi’s bread and butter. But the minimal legwork required to get there is sorely lacking here, and Eternal Atake 2 suffers from a serious lapse in quality control.

Say what you will about the lyrical drivel coming from Uzi’s mouth half the time—the low point being two different songs hinging on cringe-worthy homophones,...

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...