'Culture II' Is Migos at Their Finest, but Is That Enough?

HYPEBEAST Features Friday February 9, 2018 [hypebeast] 'Culture II' Is Migos at Their Finest, but Is That Enough? Anticipation was high for Migos to release Culture at the end of 2016. The group had released their biggest single to date, “Bad and Boujee,” a few months before, and with new management seemed destined to produce a better album than their 2015 commercial debut Young Rich Nation. So it was strange when the album finally debuted almost a year ago to the day and opened with the song “Culture,” whose refrain went “Culture album coming soon.” It made no sense. The album was here but Migos were still asking us to look ahead for the album. Culture was the album that catapulted Migos from a group that set the trends for the mainstream (“Do it for the culture, they gon’ bite like vultures,” rapped Quavo on “T-Shirt”) to the group that embodied the mainstream. 2017 was the year the members of Migos earned a Grammy nomination, branched off to do individual features on other songs (at one point Quavo was on 10 songs in the Billboard top 100), and cemented themselves in the hip-hop pantheon. Offset’s engagement to Cardi B, arguably the most popular female rapper in the country right now, only helped transition Migos from shapers of culture to embodiments of culture. Artists at the upper levels of pop culture were no longer biting Migos, they were inviting Migos into the mainstream. Like the first iteration, Culture II starts with an opening track that acts as a statement on how the Migos see themselves. “Higher we go, beg and plead for the culture,” chants Quavo in the opening lines. While Culture opened with the Migos still focused on what was to come, Culture II opens with the group anchored to the present. The Migos of Culture II know their worth. Quavo starts the first verse of the album with the lines “I’ma put these racks in your face / In your face, show you that you lame.” But more important than knowing your worth is knowing how you earned it, and the Migos are acutely aware of both the influence their style has had and how to wield it effectively. They’re are more popular and successful than ever, and while they may boast about the burdens their success has relieved them of, their style has never been more risk-averse. Culture II falls into the trap all mainstream hip-hop acts that reach the upper echelons of popularity fall into: playing it safe. [hypebeast] Culture II is largely a recycling of the formulas and styles that made the Migos popular, with minimal variation to avoid any unnecessary risk. It’s also an incredibly long album. At 106 minutes of material that has mostly the same sonic palette, it’s clear the group chose to cut little, rather than cut too much and leave a hit on the cutting room floor, which would have been the riskier strategy. The result is an album bloated with filler and repetition. The group’s most forgettable tracks appear alongside some of their best. For all its repetition, Culture II occasionally combines the most exciting elements of the Migos’ style into some of their best work yet. “Narcos” is one of the few tracks that has a cohesive theme, and sees the group adopt South American cartel personas and rap over a Spanish guitar sample. It’s a standout track for its display of technical rapping ability alone. Offset and Takeoff especially excel, and each delivers a laser-sharp verse filled with detailed lyrics, percussive deliveries, and rapid fire flows. Offset packs an incredible amount of internal rhymes into his verse, spitting lines like “Go to Tijuana, put the kilo on the saddle / Sack him, hit a lick and cop pterodactyl,” with a clarity rappers who try to copy the Migos’s characteristic flow often lack. Another standout is “Supastars” that combines atmospheric cloud-rap synths with punchy 808s and one of Quavo’s better hooks on the album. Honorable CNOTE and Buddah Bless combine to produce one of the more interesting beats on Culture II that contrasts the sweet high-timbre synths with a menacing 808 bassline. [READ FULL ARTICLE ON HYPEBEAST →]( More HYPEBEAST Features [[hypebeast] What Fashion Insiders Thought About Raf Simons's Fall/Winter 2018 Show]( [[hypebeast] How Salt Bae’s Meme Re-Invigorated the Food Industry]( [[hypebeast] A Look Inside Takashi Murakami's "The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg" Exhibit in Vancouver]( Follow Us Download Our App Free on iOS and Android 2017 Hypebeast Limited. All Rights Reserved. [Unsubscribe](