Personification

The best Maxo Kream songs feel like Spike Lee dolly shots: focusing tightly on a character while slowly tilting their world off its axis. “Roaches,” from the Texas rapper’s breakout release, Punken, nimbly shifted from rosy childhood nostalgia for FUBU and Limewire to an anxious adult account of trying to protect his family during a hurricane. “Spice Ln.,” from Brandon Banks, began with a proud rundown of his street rep and morphed into a twisty trap saga that’s tragic and funny. Autobiography fuels Maxo’s storytelling, but he is at heart a stylist who molds experiences and syllables like clay.

He spent 2021’s Weight of the World flexing his range as he cruised over throwback trill, smoky soul loops, and wavy trap. Although the narratives weren’t as vivid as those on Brandon Banks, the songwriting was polished and dynamic. The varied soundscape highlighted the elasticity of his flows and coaxed out fleeter storytelling. He attempts a similar showcase on Personification, a collection of goon, swag, and cloud rap billed as a reflective spin through his career so far. But there’s not much of an arc to the Maxo Kream Künstlerroman. These feckless songs just feel like facsimiles of his past work.

The déjà vu is meant to demonstrate growth and progress, but the callbacks and echoes are more often redundant. Brooding opener “Mo Murda” blandly rehashes ideas about the overlap between religion and gang life that Maxo already explored with verve on “Cripstian” from Weight of the World. It doesn’t help that the middling verse builds to Maxo cornily labeling himself a “hypo-Crip,” a pun even Ab-Soul would steer clear of. ”Drizzy Draco 2” recycles a Brandon Banks song title for a lesser track that combines two lines from earlier in Personification: “All my opps can go to hell, they can’t live on Earth no more/I’m the Crip John Wick, turn a opp to John Doe.” The bars weren’t even memorable the first time he said them.

The constant retreading is dizzying. “Cracc Era” again pairs Maxo with Tyler, the Creator for mixtape-era shit-talking that’s fun but derivative of their 2021 team-up “Big Persona.” “Smokey” harks back to “Big Worm” from The Persona Tape, using the Friday characters for a generic street tale about repaying debts. Memphis horrorcore track “Triggaman” repurposes ad-libs from Maxo’s 2016 song “Hit Mane,” but isn’t as scenic or menacing; the lively Denzel Curry feature is the only saving grace. Familiarity can be an effective setup for surprise or refinement, but these songs frustratingly spin in place.

Maxo’s performances are memorable in flashes. He sounds weary as he weaves through road-rap drums on “Bibles and Rifles,” grimly enumerating dead loved ones. And “Street Fraternity” and “Big Hoe Me,” the record’s centerpieces, offer fresh perspectives on Maxo’s long-running Crip mythology. The former paints gang initiation as a dark rebirth that eternally marks the pledge’s soul, circumstances the latter expounds. “Hop out on foot patrol, creeping through the cars, I keep my pivot low,” Maxo raps, narrating an early mission. “Ratchet totin’, used the traffic pole as a pick and roll/14 years old, but that pole had me feeling grown,” he continues, the basketball references illustrating his youth. Shots ring out and in the mayhem, Maxo gets scooped up by the OG who sent him to do the shooting. They narrowly escape, and to Maxo’s surprise, the gangster cries, revealing the cowardice of the situation. “Hard as he look, this nigga shook,” Maxo raps with disgust.

But the tension and immersion of “Big Hoe Me” are absent for most of Personification. Maxo’s personas have always been subordinate to his episodic songwriting, which can turn a memory or an image into a pocket dimension of sensation and detail. The lazy construction of the album drains the charm and intrigue from his stories, which feel uncharacteristically impersonal. Cramming several vague personas into a trenchcoat only highlights their shared emptiness.