$NOT - Beautiful Havoc ALBUM REVIEW

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I’ve been trying to get into the underground scene lately, and the name $NOT popped up a lot. I gave his mixtape from earlier this year, -TRAGEDY+, a listen and I watched some of his music videos from Lyrical Lemonade too. Both of these were interesting to me, but I guess I wanted them to stand out more. I see the potential, but I didn’t feel like it was realized on -TRAGEDY+. Now, his new debut album, Beautiful Havoc, is here, and hopefully, this potential I saw on his mixtape and videos are realized here. Let’s get into it!

Beautiful Havoc is a hip-hop album with trap influences. Unlike -TRAGEDY+, this album takes more of an emo-rap direction like Lil Peep or Juice WRLD. This isn’t my favorite kind of rap in general, but it never stops me from listening to a project by any means. First, let’s talk about the production. The beats on here are pretty good, and most of them are from producers that I’m hearing for the first time like Donny Katana, Woodpecker, and Level, among others. The features on here is also one of the best batches of 2020 so far to me. Iann Dior seems like he’s getting better and better, Flo Milli brings a lot of energy, and Denzel Curry essentially does his thing. After all, this is $NOT’s album, so how did he do? He did pretty great here, honestly. His beat selection is pretty top-notch too, even if the ‘faded’ sound of the album doesn’t click on every song for me. There is one thing with this album that I feel is lacking, slightly. Like REASON’s debut album from earlier this year, I can’t really connect with it. While it’s nice that $NOT is trying to see what sticks with his sound, it comes without an identity of the project. His delivery is pretty catchy too, though. His flows are pretty catchy, and it’s understandable why “Revenge” has become such a hit. If I had to pick a couple tracks that would be my favorite, they’d be “Toni Braxton” and “Sangria” with Curry.

I really do enjoy Beautiful Havoc, but when I stated at the beginning of this review that $NOT has a lot of potential, I still think that this potential hasn’t been fully realized yet. Both -TRAGEDY+ and Beautiful Havoc make up an effective one-two punch for establishing that he’s on his way to success, but I think he can top both of these releases with just a tiny bit of refinement in production and delivery, even if his delivery is still good on Beautiful Havoc. Nevertheless, I’m excited about his future, and I won’t be forgetting about Beautiful Havoc any time soon.


7/10


Stream Beautiful Havoc here

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