With a title that cheekily cribs from Atmosphere’s ‘God Loves Ugly’, one of the greatest underground rap albums of all time, JID is seemingly not short of confidence on his fourth studio record.
‘God Does Like Ugly’ is epic in ambition and scope, similar to the Atlanta rapper’s acclaimed 2022 effort ‘The Forever Story’. However, it mirrors that previous album’s architecture in that its sharp 15 tracks come stripped of the bricolage baggage that sometimes plagues many otherwise stellar rap albums.
Instead, JID turns in a remarkably focused and confident collection, where tilts in genre and tone feel as smooth as a souped-up car shifting through its gears.
WRK is a bassy trap banger, Of Blue is gentle conscious rap bliss, while Wholeheartedly gracefully unspools in the form of a deft neo-soul track.
JID boasts plenty of verbal flair to match his ambitious musical vision, with a few caveats. Take the dark head-nodder On McAfee, where his flow is frequently sublime, yet the content of his bars remain somewhat opaque. This isn’t inherently a problem, it’s a mode frequently adopted within modern rap, yet you feel like JID has the nous to be a touch more lucid.
Nonetheless, ‘God Does Like Ugly’ is an engrossing modern rap album with a litany of top tier guest features (including Clipse and Vince Staples) to add the cherry on top of a rich, meticulously designed and satisfying cake.
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