The jarringly sober track “a lot,” which opens 21 Savage’s poised and superbly focused i am > i was, is contemplative without being dramatic, mournful but not morose. At one point, the 26-year-old recounts his little brother’s murder and how it warped his psychology, but he does so in a perfunctory way, like talking to a therapist who’s already familiar with the smaller details. It’s a great tone to strike first: moody at a bit of a remove.
Early in his career, the Atlanta rapper appeared almost exclusively as a mood—his voice was the ideally dry vehicle for 2016’s Savage Mode, Metro Boomin’s experiment in tempo and ambient sound. At times, 21’s appeal was explained away as a sort of authenticity fetishism, as if the raw carnage in the music was the main selling point. In truth, he’s spent the last few years building a persona that’s tormented by trauma and violence but unworried about projecting just how tough or wise or beloved or feared it’s made him. His raps are self-assured. The songs about the strip club—like the Three 6-sampling, Yung Miami-featuring “a&t”—are good because they’re good strip club songs not because they’re couched in self-awareness or PTSD.
21 is an effective writer because he’s not hung up on what everything means—he’s much more interested in how things actually are, how they feel: the pit in his stomach when he thinks about jail, the weight of his jewelry in his hand. He’s tormented but also wants to go to the club, loves his mom but also his bodyguards, and is willing to explore those halves of himself without using “whoa, there are two halves of me” as a narrative crutch. So the statement in the title—I am greater than I was—is a little misleading. This is not a record about self-improvement as a 12-step course with dramatic results. When it’s about anything, it’s about self-improvement as a small, constant struggle where you contradict yourself and eat your own tail.
The way 21 describes the grisliest details of his past can be unnerving when he filters it through an unexpected tone. He’ll rap about gruesome memories that are shocking in their neutrality: “Back in the day I used to rob with no mask on/Shit on my wrist? I woulda killed the whole house for.” 21 has burrowed so deep into his trauma-wracked brain (see “Close My Eyes” or “Numb” from 2017’s Issa Album) that the subtlest modulations on how he speaks about his demons can have a profound effect. On “asmr,” he raps, “All these dead bodies got me seein’ strange things” with a bounce in his voice that makes it seem like he’s about to introduce a new dance, and maybe he is.