“Get off your a** and hustle,” is the first line on Rich the Kid’s debut album The World Is Yours. He goes on to rap, “I’m the definition of a hustler,” which could not be more true. While The World Is Yours has been marketed as his first album, he’s been a star in the trap scene for half a decade. In the past five years, he’s released a staggering 18 mixtapes which, on average, meant a new project every three months. On top of that, he founded his own record label Rich Forever Music all before signing a deal of his own. Rich is a hustler in every sense of the word.
With the rise of Migos over the past year-and-a-half, trap music has reached peak popularity. Factor that in to the fact that there has been no shortage of output from Rich the Kid in the past five years, and The World Is Yours starts to become just another trap album. A bundle of the tracks have refreshing takes on typical trap conventions, but there’s little differentiation in the content from song to song — just more ways to brag about money and success. That’s not to say Rich’s “debut” doesn’t have its merits.
The World Is Yours is not only stacked with earworm hooks, but also stellar features from some of hip-hop’s hottest artists. The Kendrick Lamar-assisted single “New Freezer” is one of the best bangers to come out in recent memory. “No Question” with Future has an unbelievably catchy melody. Lil Wayne hops on “End of Discussion” and puts his own interpretation of the triplet flow on display with a couple decent punchlines. The hooks throughout are so catchy, after a single listen, they’ll probably be stuck in your head till you find something equally as infectious to replace it.
Rich’s major downfall with this album is that it’s entirely front-loaded. The first six songs are consistently good, but as soon as the Chris Brown feature comes on, the album tapers off — save for the songs with Wayne and Swae Lee features.
Luckily, The World Is Yours isn’t bloated in length. Streaming has caused tons of artists to drag out the runtimes of their projects to help rack up as many streams as possible. In a sense, it’s refreshing to see a trap album that’s just 45 minutes long, especially after the train wreck that was Migos’ Culture II. Despite being more digestible timewise, half of the songs on this album are throwaway tracks: It doesn’t matter how listenable the record is when half of it’s skippable.
If Rich had scrapped the features from Chris Brown, Trippie Redd and Quavo, he would have been able to collaborate with more interesting artists who could have set his album apart from the clutter in mainstream hip-hop.
A handful of these songs will no doubt be in rotation at clubs and parties for a fair amount of time, but the extras might as well have never existed.
Final Grade: C+
