Quavo has rarely sounded less inspired, which I should’ve expected when I saw the word-salad definition of QRÖMELIFE he posted to Twitter. “Its a LIFESTYLE We all got chromosomes,” he wrote. “You spend most of your life looking for what made u special not knowing u got it in you take a look at yourself nd realize when go thru challenges U are protected in this outter of layer of QRÖME.” I’m not sure of the connection between that statement and the album itself, where he can hardly scrape together any memorable lines or flows. It’s such a nothingburger that it’s hard to even rag on the lobotomized take on a Mr. Collipark-style twerk jam on “Trance (Walk It Down)” or the wannabe TikTok GRWM video trend “Thick in the Mirror.” The lone standout “Hit-A-Lik” captures the funk the rest of the album doesn’t in Pharrell’s flickering bassline, which almost reminds me of Erick Sermon’s Shaft flip on Jigga’s “Reservoir Dogs.” Quavo, for a moment, is boogying like that generation of ’80s MCs who grew up on James Brown.
The famous colleagues who’ve shown up for the open bar and Louis gift bags don’t add much. Lil Baby’s melodies are on autopilot for “Ball My Love,” a by-the-numbers tricking ballad where an Auto-Tuned Quavo almost impressively can’t come up with a single notable detail about his girl. Everyone on “Baby Breath” was a lot better at rapping a decade ago, but I don’t mind—it’s like watching Ice Cube’s BIG3 basketball league on a hungover Sunday afternoon. P’s Baby Keem impression isn’t half bad. Tyler is having a little fun stretching his ad-libs like TisaKorean. A$AP Rocky is there. The Justin Timberlake-featuring “House Music” is a dumpster fire—the kind of private-equity house music that makes Honestly, Nevermind sound like Frankie Knuckles. “Music you buy houses with,” sings Quavo, breaking the fourth wall by revealing that they’re all here to fund their backyard tennis court renovations.
“Away” with Offset makes me wish I wasn’t shitting on QRÖMELIFE. There’s not anything particularly great about the song, other than that Quavo and Offset still bounce off each other well, even if they’re more like business acquaintances these days. It’s impossible to hear Quavo say, “I’m still a Migo” without thinking about Takeoff, and how important the Migos were to the last decade and a half of popular rap music. It’s probably the only song on the album that leaves me thinking more about Quavo than Pharrell—like there’s an alternate universe inside of this song where QRÖMELIFE is about Quavo’s mid-career pivot into a new-age Raheem the Dream, instead of a Pharrell business expense. Well, it’s not. Good luck on that promotion or whatever, P.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
