“They tearin’ down the real ones,” rues 21 Savage on “Atlanta Tears,” the penultimate track from his latest album, What Happened to the Streets? For the 33-year-old rapper who has earned four Billboard chart-topping albums, a 2020 Grammy Award for his 2019 single “A Lot,” and a reputation as a defining voice in Southern rap for the past decade, “the real ones” are not only the multiple friends he lost to the street life. It’s also the “soldiers” navigating an Atlanta ruptured by the untimely murders of Lil Keed and Takeoff from Migos, the yearslong racketeering trial against Young Thug’s YSL Records, and the repercussions those incidents engendered. Given his own experience in becoming a target of national scrutiny, thanks to a high-profile 2019 arrest by ICE for emigrating as a child from his birthplace in Britain, it seems like 21 Savage is well positioned to address and heal some of the fractures in his hometown scene.
However, 21 Savage also wants to remind us that he’s not a pussy. “Millionaire, but I’m still a soldier,” he growls on “Where You From,” a track where a quintet of producers led by Southside and Wheezy nestle loud, barking dogs in the background. Aptly, another track is called “Dog $hit,” where the rapper and guest Glorilla flex about their swollen bank accounts. With so much money, it seems like 21 Savage could leave behind the reputation he enjoyed as a teenager “thuggin’” in Atlanta’s Zone 6, where “shit like Vietnam/Gun smoke in my lungs,” as he puts it on “Where You From.” But in rap, “the streets” are also a metaphor for the Black community, which often nurtures and inspires its children, only to loudly and painfully wonders if they’ve left it behind once they’ve grown up and achieved success. “You know you got them niggas out here sayin’ the fame changed me,” he says on “Gang Over Everything,” a track on which he raps over longtime collaborator and super-producer Metro Boomin’s chipmunk soul beat. “I got thirty niggas right here sayin’ that I’m the same me.”
The tension between bridging a community’s divides while remaining committed to its unspoken codes should lie at the heart of What Happened to the Streets?. Tragically, it doesn’t. 21 Savage may have had some success on last year’s American Dream by balancing reflections on his status as a wealthy immigrant artist with enough of his patented trap talk to satiate hardcore fans. But here, he succumbs to the latter bit far too often. He wastes time threatening the online commentariat trolling his every move. “All your internet niggas, I see you. All you content creators, catch you down bad and break your MacBook,” he warns on “Where You From.” It’s the same tactics that rap dudes like Drake (who recently boasted of physically confronting a bystander for mocking him while he recorded a livestream) and Snoop Dogg (smarting over detractors mad about his MAGA courtship) have deployed when criticized. Speaking of Drake, the Canadian American superstar cameos on “Mr. Recoup,” and trots out a nonplussed flow that hearkens to his newly minted “Iceman” persona. Latto uses “Pop It” to rap, ““Buy a Birk(in), I squirt, buy a car, I cream.” She’s responding to 21 Savage’s rules for committing to monogamy: “Ten bodies or less, you a fuckin’ queen/If it’s less than nine, condoms ain’t a thing/And if it’s less than eight, you get a fuckin’ ring.”
21 Savage remains a compelling artist capable of adding depth to his sundry rants about shooting opps and never trusting bitches. On “Cup Full,” he opens with dialogue from Young Thug, who explains how past trauma informs their disastrous life choices. “We don’t know how to, like, cope with agony. We cope with bad things by doing drugs, sippin’ syrup, smoking weed, poppin’ Percs, doin’ ecstasy,” he says. But these moments of needed context can’t disguise that much of What Happened to the Streets sounds inessential, and inferior to past peaks like 2017’s Issa Album and 2018’s i am > i was. Tracks like “Stepbrothers” with Young Nudy, “Mr. Recoup” (where he and Drake repeat “Us, us, it was us”), and “Dog $hit” falter over weak choruses and a lack of real emotional stakes.
There are five strong cuts near the end of What Happened to the Streets? that suggest the album it could have been. On “Code of Honor,” 21 Savage and G Herbo snap hard over a thrillingly ominous beat from Taurus and Casper as they honored friends dead from gun violence. “Tattoos cover my face/Scars on my whole body/On the cup bad, I’m missing Johnny/I had shootouts with him right beside me,” raps 21 Savage as he drowns his sorrows in liquid intoxicants. “Gang Over Everything” and “Halftime Interlude” build on the momentum as he raps on the latter, “Streets murdered all my niggas and I’m traumatized.” On “Big Stepper” he admits navigating hurt feelings after his girl uncovers evidence of a sexual interlude with a “pretty girl” sidepiece, leaving him to conclude, “Everybody fuck up.” “Atlanta Tears” features a strong verse from Lil Baby. Perhaps chastened by the failure of his recent solo album, WHAM, he claims, “I don’t do this shit for fuckboys, so you ain’t gotta listen.”
What Happened to the Streets closes with “I Wish.” As 21 Savage reminisces about fallen rappers like Takeoff and Lil Keed as well as Juice WRLD and Nipsey Hussle, and Jawan Harris sings the chorus with spiritual fervor, one imagines it to be a maudlin but sincere follow-up to American Dream’s closer, “Dark Days” and 21’s advice for kids to stay in school…until one realizes that “I Wish” is a cover of an 2000 R. Kelly hit single. The moment eventually feels disastrous.
Why would 21 Savage try to rehabilitate R. Kelly, a man who assaulted and sexually abused countless women and children for decades? Maybe he’s a fan that still enjoys Kelly’s music despite the harm that disgraced singer has done. Or perhaps, like too many other rappers, he’s keenly interested in male exaltation and redemption, regardless of how that mentality hurts everyone else.
