NBA YoungBoy Sounds Stale On 'Richest Opp'

The cover of NBA YoungBoy’s latest mixtape, Richest Opp shows the Baton Rouge rapper getting a fresh fade while sitting in the middle of his driveway. His coke-white Rolls Royce SUV is directly behind him – with his baby mama sitting on the hood with one of his kids in her lap. An armed security guard stands to his left, a briefcase filled with cash is sprawled open on the ground, and another one of his daughters is prematurely practicing her driving in a hot pink toy car. There’s a lot going on, but that’s by design – capturing the scattered genius of YoungBoy and the mix of music that makes up his twentieth solo mixtape.

Pettily Released on the same date as Lil Durk’s eight studio album, Almost Healed, Richest Opp is a direct response to the recent feud between the two artists. Regardless of whether or not the beef was for show or an attempt at harnessing mainstream appeal for Durk, the Chicago emcee opted to take the opposite route as YoungBoy. Whereas he dropped his album led by the J. Cole-assisted anti-violence anthem “All My Life,” YoungBoy decided to use the situation to mostly hone in on his more aggressive sounds and lyricism, refusing to back down.

The result is YoungBoy unapologetically embracing his role as a mainstream villain in Hip Hop, as he continues to increase his staying power as one of the game’s most prolific and resonant rappers in the game. Across Richest Opp, he continues to deliver his dependable sound over more of the same “YoungBoy type beats” that take up the large majority of the rest of his discography.

YoungBoy is at his absolute best when he’s crooning, warbling and rapping soulfully over beats that flaunt classical guitar or starry piano loops that elicit his deepest thoughts and most intimate feelings. That’s surely present across Richest Opp – but he dips and dives between thoughts so quickly that it’s often hard to grasp onto his ideas. On the intro, “Bitch Let’s Do It,” he details personal experiences with loyalty, betrayal and addiction in a hurried manner – it all flows out of him like a waterfall, as if he doesn’t know how to properly release them, using his croonful vocal inflections to emphasize his feelings of paranoia and confidence.

“Don’t wear designer, I still make the news,” he raps confidently on “Perspective” – serving as a good example of him continuing to believe that he relies on the authenticity of his music to be successful, yet Richest Opp and its title are him attempting to capitalize on his beef with Durk. With cheesy, recycled bars like referring to a sexual partner as a “professor” for her “good brain,” it also proves that YoungBoy is not exempt from delivering corny lines amid all of his madness.

Overall, Richest Opp is YoungBoy at his most unfiltered and unapologetic, taking aim at anyone and everyone. On the aptly-titled “Fuck The Industry Pt. 2,” he confusingly sends shots at Drake for not doing a song with him and continuing to support Durk, J. Cole, Lil Yachty and others. His stream-of-consciousness attacks were ultimately a hot topic on Twitter upon the tape’s initial release but have been quickly forgotten. This sums up the mixtape as a whole, finding YoungBoy mostly doubling down on his signature sound without bringing any real staying power to the project as a whole – after all, it was released as a response to the beef that will soon be forgotten too.

Although the pacing of the album is stellar, flipping between pent-up aggression and intimate reflections, he quickly passes through thoughts and feelings that he would benefit from further exploring. On “Father,” he gets on his knees and asks for forgiveness for his lifestyle and his past mistakes – there are people out to get him, there’s a reason he’s the way he is. He acknowledges the dangers of his lifestyle in the middle of all the aggression, rage and paranoia  by expressing remorse and his belief in a higher power. “What You Gonna Do” finds him spitting with a much more conversational timbre, addressing the loss of his grandma and how it affected him growing up. It emits a sense of resilience and readiness to protect himself and his loved ones because of his lived experiences like this.

On “Slimes Go Where I Go,” he ponders his death and re-assures that his loved ones will keep his name alive. It’s clear that this is a situation he continues to seriously consider the possibility of, showing that he knows his family would know what to do in this event. “I’m a dead man, that’s what they say, I know it / I’m overdue, don’t pick and choose, I talk my shit to show it,” he raps, acknowledging a scenario in which he feels as though he’s continuing to dodge with every passing day.

Whereas I Rest My Case, one of his releases from earlier this year, found him full-on experimenting with the rage sound widely popularized by Playboi Carti’s 2020 fire-starter Whole Lotta Red, the problem with Richest Opp is simply that it’s more of the same from an artist whose sole concern is to drop as much music as possible. By setting out to do just that, the music feels stagnant.