Quinton Burnett | Staff Writer
Amy Harris | Associated Press
The wait is finally over. Quavonce has finally delivered his solo album, Quavo Huncho.
The output resulted in something all too familiar: mediocre content placed strategically behind pomp and circumstance. The 19-track project comes in with a whopping 10 features from some of music’s biggest names. Drake, 21 Savage, Travis Scott, Kid Cudi and even Madonna all split the bill with the resident pop star of Quality Control in a tour de force of disappointing star power.
The most glaring issue with Quavo Huncho is the tape’s length. The project comes in at a laborious 19-track, one-hour-and-six-minute run time. For a rapper whose biggest solo moments have come as a featured artist (“Pick Up the Phone,” “Good Drank,” etc.) a full-length project of this magnitude is, to state kindly, ambitious.
Amid the stumbles, the album does have its bright spots. “Flip the Switch” finds the Migos frontman paired with Drake over bouncy Cubeatz and Wheezy production, mimicking the timeless flow gifted to rap by Uncle Juve. “Flip the Switch” places Quavo firmly into his wheelhouse, featuring a tenacious and relentless double-time flow that transports listeners passenger side on the high speed chase.
Like a clear summer night, the bright spots are few. For long stretches of the album Quavo seems lost, stumbling over flow after flow after flow, leaving much of the album both unpalatable and untenable.
Much of Quavo’s draw is found in the charismatic ease with which he delivers his lyrics, however on Quavo Huncho, this ease was replaced with sheer ineptitude. Plodding his way through tracks “Go All the Way,” “Huncho Dreams,” “How Bout That” and more, Quavo abandons the charismatic, breezy flow and replaces it with something strained. Gone is the consistent strong double time and the smooth North Atlanta affected drawing hooks, and in their place have been left something altogether more unctuous.
Quavo Huncho was supposed to be a triumphant victory call. The moment rap historians and hip-hop nerds the world over could pinpoint as Quavo’s ascension from mere front man to legitimate rap superstar. The project that proved Quavo was a self-sustaining hit mill. It seemed to do everything but that. Huncho is a project that stretched itself too thin, tried to take on too many sounds, asked for one too many flows from one of rap’s more average technicians.
With respect to ambition in art and a belief in rewarding effort, Quavo Huncho earns a staggering one-and-a-half-star rating. Fingers crossed, the Quality Control camp has it together for the year’s remaining releases.
The Hampton Script 