Atlanta rapper Destroy Lonely is back again with another project titled “LOVE LASTS FOREVER.”
He has a lot to prove with this album, since he’s been attempting to recapture the success he saw with his 2022 project “NO STYLIST” ever since it debuted. While I am excited for this record, I personally am not expecting much after hearing recent singles and features.
Starting off, we have the performance of Destroy Lonely, or Lone for short as I will refer to him for the rest of this review. Lone isn’t necessarily known for his great bouts of lyricism and flow across his whole catalog; he more so lets the production do the talking on most tracks typically. This is no different on this record.
Even after listening to the album five times, each track vocally still blends together and I can’t tell a lot of them apart from each other when casually listening. This is a huge issue I see in music nowadays: when artists can’t figure out how to correctly differentiate each track in an album.
It makes the listening experience seem like a drag because every song blends together. Especially on a 21-track album, you can see how this can be a huge deciding factor in if the record is good or not. While I do enjoy what Lone brings to each track with his vocals and such, it really does mesh together quickly.
This is made even worse when you have artists from the same label that Lone is a part of, like Ken Carson and Homixide Gang, who do the exact same thing as him. At the end of the day, while Lone’s vocal style is appreciated at times, he needs to change up severely or he’ll cease to have a fanbase besides his super loyal listeners.
With only two features on the album, coming from Lil Uzi Vert and Ken Carson, I wish there were more in all honesty. This comes from the fact that a lot of the tracks end up sounding the same. With more artists collaborating, the more different the album can actually be.
With this being said, I value the two features we did get heavily. Uzi easily had the better of the two features here when performing on “LOVE HURTS.” With his verse, we got a more melodic side of Uzi, which really does help separate this track from the rest of the record.
Now with Ken Carson, although he does sound extremely similar to Lone, his feature is still a nice addition to the tracklist. The track “THRILL” as a whole is one of my favorites off of the album as well, with Ken Carson helping that decision be made.
After being pleased with these two features, I can safely say that they are easily the best part of the entire album.
Next, the production. Just like Lone’s vocals, the production from track to track is quite similar as well. Each track opens up with the same kind of predictable beat that you’d see all over Youtube when searching “Destroy Lonely Type Beat.” It’s baffling to me to see each instrumental lack so much personality.
On top of that, the production is somewhat sleepy throughout the album, leaving me to genuinely fall asleep on my first two listens of the project. I get if that is the point of your music, but as a trap artist, I highly doubt Lone wants this to happen to listeners when first playing his album. This being paired up with Lone’s vocals allows the album to take forever to finish from beginning to end, and it’s not a good ride.
With this being said, I do have a few outliers of his usual approach to the instrumentation. These being “LOVE HURTS” and “THRILL.” Besides these two tracks, everything else is a bore to listen to.
The production as a whole on this record is lackluster at best. With all of what was said prior, this album is not replayable whatsoever. Like I’ve said before, nearly every track ends up blending together with three or four exceptions. Between the bland sounding vocals from Lone, and uninspired-sounding instrumentals, if you hear one track, you’ve heard them all. With this record having an hour and four minute runtime, the soundscape gets boring very quickly. By my fourth listen of this album, I wanted to skip so many tracks just to get to the end.
Overall, beyond listening a few times for this review, I do not see myself coming back to this album whatsoever, besides playing three tracks maximum. This album is not very good at all. Lone attempted to revitalize his career, since he disappointed heavily with his 2023 project, “If Looks Could Kill.”
However, he just dug himself an even deeper hole with this record. To improve, Lone could at the very least reduce the amount of tracks on his albums. No one in this day in age wants to sit there for 21 tracks for any artist, especially if their performance isn’t even good. To add on, Lone needs to harshly change his style. While it does work to a degree, I am personally tired of his specific style, even more so with multiple artists adapting to this style now.
After all is said and done, this album is a 2 out of 10 for me.