Correction Paroles Nav’s Good Intentions & Brown Boy 2: NOT GOOD par Anthony Fantano

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Ahh! In all my years, I never thought it would end like this! Help me, Cal!

(I can't, buddy! Looks like we're surrounded on this one!)

No! Not only am I gonna die...I'm gonna die with you! Aghhhhhh!

(Wait! I've got it...just say the words!)

I hope you're not serious...saying them for a third time could be dangerous!

(Anthony, you've gotta! It's our only hope!)

This new Nav album...it's NOT GOOD! Ah!

(Hegh!)

Yeah, this new Nav album, it's not very good.

This is a new album from Nav, Canadian rapper, singer, and producer. It is the third time I am formally reviewing his work, and yes, yet again, I think it is not good. Which, given my thoughts on his last two projects, givеn his performance on those projеcts, given his lack of evolution and growth on this new project, should be absolutely no surprise to anyone.

Although I suppose in at least one sense it was me. Because Good Intentions, I did go into this record with...good intentions, in fact. Especially considering how much I enjoyed one of the teasers to this project, "Turks", featuring (Gunna) as well as Travis Scott. And sure, while Travis could have gone a bit harder on this track, the instrumental was lush and gorgeous and immersive, and even Nav's vocal performance didn't really underwhelm me in the same way it typically does on other tracks and features. So maybe in some way, Nav would turn a new leaf on this project. Maybe I have been exhibiting a bit of bias against the self-proclaimed Brown Boy, and all I really needed to do was just acclimate myself to his sound, to his style, hear a few projects, and now this one is going to come around and really hit me.

Well it did hit me...as one of his most annoying projects yet. Standing at 50 minutes, and believe me, it is a long 50 minutes, with 18 entire tracks and a relatively stacked feature list, too - Travis Scott, like I said. Young Thug is on here a few times, Future appears as well. Lil Durk, there's even a posthumous Pop Smoke appearance on this thing too. And if I could kick my deeper thoughts on this record off with a compliment, I will say generally I think Nav did make some slightly better production choices on this one. The instrumentals aren't anything out of the norm for him, they're trap, they're spacey, it's a strong vibe.

However, the full appeal of this project hinges on Nav's lyrics, his vocals, his flows, his songwriting, and those are as terrible as they've ever been. Yes, with what seems like more appearances from other guests, maybe a slightly increased production budget as well, Nav artistically isn't really any better off than he was a few years ago. Really, every key flaw of Nav's previous projects also shows up on Good Intentions, but maybe, I guess, with a grander showing.

For one, there are weird and eyebrow-raising bars all over this thing, like with the opener:
Thank god I ain't got no baby mama between my fetti
If I c*m inside she got a king inside her belly
(laughing) Wow, you...you did THAT one.

On track 6 from this record, "Status" featuring Lil Uzi Vert, there are all of these really weird verbal repet**ions that make for a really awkward flow all over the track, especially when Nav says things like:
Gucci on every sock, on sock
Got her sucking on my c*ck, c*ck, c*ck
Got ice, talking rock, rock, rocks
Summertime, need a drop, drop, drop
There's also a really weird moment on the track "Coast to Coast" where Nav is talking about, I guess, his drug use, his drug addiction, saying:
F**k it, I rap about drugs all the time, 'cause I do them too
Double cup filled with mud, I'm about to abuse you
Which, I'm thinking in the context of the song, he's talking about, like, abusing the drugs he's rapping about. But the inflection of the line does make it feel like it's a weird aside, where he's like, "Hey, now I'm all drugged up AND I'M ABOUT TO ABUSE YOU".

This bar here about his jeweler hooking him up with canary yellow jewelry and likening that to his jeweler p*ssing on him was certainly a curious moment.

And then there are tracks that just, topically and conceptually, are really gross or off-putting, like on "She Hurtin", where it's just bar after bar after bar of pure pandering, patronizing...maybe some people would call it simpin'. But still, it's not really that great of a look.

Then there are other cuts like "Brown Boy", which, given how much Nav reps that in his songs, I was expecting a little bit more out of. Like, I don't know, maybe, like, a really cool brown boy anthem that everyone who he feels like identifies with him could really get down with. But for the most part the track just sort of sees him feeding into this delusion that everyone wants to be him, and would trade places with him, and is so incredibly jealous of him. Bit of a missed opportunity there, but on top of it, and this is an aside - I feel like tracks like this in a way work as Das Racist erasure, and I will not stand for it.

But honestly, the greatest crime of Nav's lyrics is not that he has all of these awful standout bars that just stick in your mind because they're so unbearably cringe. Really, it's more, again, that his content is so general as he's just continually rapping about how many drugs he's doing, how many girls he's f**king, how much he's chilling and vibing and all that, without much in the way of any variation or specifics.

And sure, there are points on the record like "Overdose" and other personal spots in the track list too where he's rapping a bit more about his come up, his background, his family, his addiction, and his more negative and I guess depressive feelings that he deals with week to week. But again, I feel like he really fails to make this connect to the listener in any significant or emotional way, because he doesn't really orient anything around these thoughts, these ideas, these feelings. A lot of the time they're just packed into fleeting bars that go shoulder to shoulder with the same generally druggy and materialistic content he delivers most of the time.

The reason Nav's music feels so vapid and substance-less is there's not much of a focus on anything of personal significance or emotional importance. Even as he's bragging about the money he's making and the designers he's wearing, it's all pretty low impact, as it's very unenthusiastic, it's flatly delivered, and it's not paired with the greatest vocal melodies or performances in the world either.

So I guess that's the next thing with this LP: Nav's vocals and singing are still terrible. His voice is tiny, it's thin, it has no presence, it has no personality, with the touches of auto-tune he places on his voice, he sounds robotic, it's like he's an AI, his delivery is so stonefaced and emotionally deficient, and he sounds like this for nearly 18 tracks, almost an hour. After a while it becomes mind-numbing, especially mind-numbing because his writing is still terrible.

I have no idea how it is that Nav continually writes with these same, super basic, cyclical, tiny, TINY flows. Like, TINY flows. Very small flows. Microscopic flows. I will admit that I don't think about this as much as I should when I review hip-hop music, but Nav really makes me come face to face with it, and it's that when he is writing a verse it's like he can't conceive of a flow for that verse that lasts longer than a bar, or might vary up slightly on the next bar creating some kind of greater pattern. I'm just having my brain slowly fried because it's being deprived of any kind of variation or stimulation, outside of this one little...
Ba-ba-da bep-bep-bep
Ba-ba-da-ba-da bep-bep-bep
Da-ba-da-ba-da bep-bep-bep
Ba-ba-da-ba-da bep-bep-bep
Ba-ba-da-ba-da bep-bep-bep
Like, Jesus, please, do something else!
Like, for a few tracks it's not that great, but as the album really starts to wear down on me mentally, I am just having my soul sucked away, just one minute at a time. Beyond that, there are some tracks that are sleepier and more boring than others, like "Saint Laurent", and tracks that feel more underwritten than others, like the cut here with Don Toliver where the ending is pretty abrupt and structurally there is way less to this track than pretty much every other song here. So, yes, there are spots on this thing where he is genuinely half-a**ing it again, but just like with Reckless and just like with Bad Habits, this album is so, so so so devoid of anything interesting or engaging or even vaguely memorable.

Now, what's worse, and this is hilarious, because Nav does not have an original idea bumping around in his head, of course he had to release this project Lil Uzi Vert-style. Which, if you guys remember, he recently dropped his Eternal Atake project, and then just a week after he sort of came out with a deluxe version of that project, attaching an entirely new project to it - Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World 2, so he had one album stacked on top of another a week later. Nav has done the same thing, dropping Brown Boy 2, but he didn't even wait a week. He put this whole thing out, again, just a few days later.

And what is hilarious about this in comparison with the Lil Uzi Vert thing, I'm not crazy about either project but they both sound pretty distinct, you know? Eternal Atake has a completely different vibe than Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World in terms of the production aesthetics, in terms of the guest appearances, in terms of the overall flow of both projects. Brown Boy 2 stylistically, sonically, vocally, instrumentally, everything does not really sound that much different than Good Intentions. It's like he just took the same f**kin' sh*t and just stacked it on top of the same f**kin' sh*t.

Ugh, I am tired. I grow tired, I grow so tired of this. Please, please, I want to suffer less. I want to suffer not as much as I am suffering now. Please, on the next record, if we could just have, like, a bit more of, like, a smidge more of emotion. Just something, anything, just anything other than this, and then more of this on top of this, anything. This Nav albums...it's not good.

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