By Kwase Lane, Staff Writer
[Warner Bros.; 2019]
Rating: 3/10

Key tracks: “I Love It”, “Off White”, “Vroom Vroom Vroom”

In his sophomore album, Harverd Dropout, Lil Pump shows how far he can fall as an artist. Most of the tracks on this project find Lil Pump lacking his signature bombastic energy that brought him into the limelight. A few of the livelier pieces should definitely get their fair share of play at parties, but aside from those occasions, this album is something to be avoided. At its best, Harverd Dropout is a subpar project with some danceable tunes, and at its worst, it is the death of hope.

Read more: Album Review: Lil Pump – Lil Pump

“I Love It” is the most recognizable track on this project by a wide margin. Lauded for months on end for its bizarre vocals, many of which came from the mouth of Kanye West; this song feels like something that shouldn’t be. The fever dream-esque performance on Saturday Night Live and blocky video didn’t hurt its popularity either. “I Love It” is lightning in a bottle, and it feels like Lil Pump spends the entire 40-minute runtime of the album trying to recapture it. It’s too bad he couldn’t because instead of making his audience smile and ask “why am I listening to this” he just did the second part.

The seventh track, “Off White”, is one of the more decent pieces on this project. Thank You Fizzle’s production is weirdly inconsistent, as the two tracks he made for this album are worlds apart. On this track, he does an outstanding job of creating sounds that are deep, catchy and easy to move your body to. The other is made up of a woman’s moans that form an unholy conglomeration with Pump’s voice. Pump’s delivery on this one is on point as well. The only place where he drops the ball is in his lyricism. It’s hilarious that when he gets tired of saying the same three words, again and again, the next phrase to come out of his mouth is a Fortnite reference followed by a few pew-pew sounds. It really makes you scared for his grasp of the English language when Pump barely manages to say more than 20 different words in one song.

Oh no. Why does he keep making car noises? Is he okay? “Vroom Vroom Vroom” would be great if it was a joke, but it’s not. This song is a mess of bass, imitation car noises and Pump bragging about how he’ll shoot you. This song leaves me with so many more questions than answers. The fact that this was allowed to be on an album shows how little quality control goes into this man’s music. This song hurts to listen to. I only made it a key track so I could warn you.

I wish Harverd Dropout didn’t exist, but unfortunately for all of us, wishes don’t come true. Only a quarter of this album is worth listening to, and the rest is a dumpster fire given auditory form. Part of me is waiting for Pump to say this entire project is a joke in an attempt to salvage some of his self-respect from this shipwreck of a project, but that’s not going to happen. I can’t shake the image of Pump smiling proudly while standing on music’s desecrated corpse. If your life suddenly got worse on February 22 for no discernable reason now you know why. This album is why.

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