While the Rich the Kid we meet on The World Is Yours clearly considers himself a big-leaguer, the album is short on the deftness and polish that was promised on “New Freezer.” He ably deploys the standard stop-and-go triplet flow across its 14 tracks, but does so without ever shifting from a self-limiting rap model, leaning heavily on concussive, bass-heavy beats and lyrical contributions from a bounty of veteran and trend-setting artists.

The title track is a comparatively honest introduction, lacking in the “yuhs” and “ayys” that soon begin to overwhelm and distract. “World Is Yours” lays out the devil-may-care posturing and slight bits of humor (“No Biggie but I used to trap in the Coogi”) that listeners should expect for the next 40-plus minutes. The clarity of the leadoff bleeds into the glut of trap motifs that is “New Freezer,” wherein Rich gladly ingratiates himself with the album’s talking points: money, women, cars, and big jewelry.

Rich shows off his lyrical styling, but even that remains far from revelatory. While his voice suffuses the album, it exhibits only a handful of emotional states. For Rich, who has noted that he does not write his bars down, but rather, “I just go in there and—boom,” his enthusiasm doesn’t make up for his lack of styles and flows. His insistence on rapping about “money, hoes, and clothes” as Biggie waxed 23 years ago puts Rich in a position to get consistently outshone by the many co-signs scattered across the album.

This is pointedly clear on “End of Discussion,”a dismissal of perceived haters that is piqued by a curious beeping sound and the noise of a money-counting machine at work. Lil Wayne does the heavy lifting here with a bodied rollout of well-paced, self-referential rhymes: “Pull of fast like a loose cheetah/One diamond ring on two fingers/Cheating on these hoes, call me Tune-cheater.” He sounds as if he were running a clinic on the song; a rap alum at homecoming mingling with the popular freshman. Meanwhile, Rich is somewhat adrift in his unremarkable feints. It makes the notable absence of female voices significant as woman contribute little to the album save as unnamed dalliances, anonymous tricks, and forget-me-nots.

The exception is “Too Gone,” a track with a metronomic xylophone trill produced by the Canadian beatmaker WondaGurl. Khalid levitates the song with his crooning, modest refrain about being too faded to connect with someone who wants your affection. Rich, though, continues to assail his doubters while suggesting just a bit of openness: “Really not used to you calling me/I’m in love with a coupe.” It’s the greatest concession to romance as we’ll get on the LP.

However, Rich appears in peak form on “Dead Friends,” widely regarded to be a Lil Uzi Vert diss track. The album’s finale has Rich channeling Meek Mill in the drill rap cadence familiar from his mixtape days. The caustic clap backs, even if muddled, are best in the chorus: “All them dead friends (dead), you a middleman (what)/You a little man (little, huh)/Your money getting shorter (shorter).” Given some direction, Rich’s best when he’s got a real target in his sights to slight.

In an album that touts a reputable lineup of producers and contributors, it smarts as Rap Caviar bait rather than as a collective trap triumph. Algorithms are the new inroads to platinum after all. Still, braggadocio is a trap rapper’s default setting, and the kid may be rich now, but The World Is Yours wants for all of its wealth-inspired imagery and allusions to amassed clout.

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The Migos’ best quality is their ability to present truly virtuosic rapping in ways that are commercially viable, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that Offset, Takeoff, and Quavo’s talents have diminished since Culture’s release. But if Culture marked the very peak of the Migos’ triumphal arc, buoyed by a swell of goodwill, Culture II is simply… here, arriving in the wake of a handful of solid but inessential singles that hardly compare to the zeitgeist-dominating force that was “Bad and Boujee” or “T-Shirt.” It’s hard to say what Culture II adds to our appreciation of Migos in ways that don’t feel redundant: Yes, the trio is still incredibly successful, still ridiculously wealthy, and hey, one of them’s engaged to Cardi B! Where Culture was an event, its sequel feels more like an occurrence, the quality of its songs handicapped by the artlessness of its presentation.

The first thing to note about Culture II for anyone who may have made non-Migos-related plans for their leisure time is that it is long—dauntingly so. Its 24 tracks range across one hour and 45 minutes of digital space. Maybe the Migos just had thatmany ideas they simply could not deign to edit down. But it seems more likely to be another attempt to game the current Billboard and RIAA rules, in which 1,500 individual song streams count towards one full album sale (thus, the more songs on an album, the higher and faster it charts). It’s a familiar play from Migos’ label, whose “Quality Control” moniker feels fairly ironic here; last month, they released the 30-track Control the Streets Vol. 1 compilation, 22 of which featured Migos or some combination of its individual members. And currently pinned to the top of Migos’ Spotify page under “Artist’s Pick” is not Culture II, the album, but a 72-track playlist that repeats the album’s tracklist three times in a row. It’s not like this kind of craven opportunism is a recent development in the music industry, but it feels pretty dark all the same.

All this power-grabbing does a significant disservice to the songs here, most of which are good to great. In fact, there are two strong projects to be culled from Culture II’s sprawl: an album-quality selection of slick, playful nudges in experimental but chart-friendly directions on one side, and a mixtape’s worth of expensive updates to the O.G. Migos sound on the other. The lonesome sax solos wafting through “Too Playa” pair elegantly with the muted horns on Kanye co-production “BBO (Bad Bitches Only)” and the loungy “Made Men,” on which Takeoff’s adlibs feel like the intimate asides of a ’70s soul singer. On “Stir Fry,” the trio step outside their comfort zone with a Pharrell beat originally intended for T.I. circa 2008. “On the nose” doesn’t begin to describe “Narcos,” with its Latin guitar, “arriba!” ad-libs, and the best-worst drug lord accent attempt since “Tony Montana”—but if that’s not exactly what you come to a Migos song for, then Offset’s standing ovation-worthy second verse is. “I ain’t really with the razzle-dazzle/Knock him off and then I throw him off the boat paddle/Go to Tijuana, put the kilo on the saddle,” he raps with stunning precision, a reminder of why it’s worth it to trek through nearly two hours of material.

This isn’t to say that the “mixtape half” of Culture II is underwhelming, exactly; there’s a lot that works here, from the cosmic Ren Faire chords of “Supastars” (though it’s a weird choice for the album’s third single) to the haunted “Crown the Kings,” whose waterlogged vocal samples evoke a trapped-out Kate Bush. But the farther you journey into the album’s increasingly sleepy second half, the harder it is for these songs to hold your attention for much longer than a verse and a couple hooks. Even the song structures themselves start to feel formulaic: each of the album’s first nine songs opens with a Quavo hook leading into a Quavo verse, to the point where it’s often a full two minutes in before we hear anything beyond ad-libs from his compadres. “Too Much Jewelry” finally breaks free from the repetitive template: a Zaytoven-produced Gucci Mane homage and a showcase for Takeoff, who regularly steals the spotlight on Culture II even when relegated to a song’s final verse. The youngest Migo’s turn on the sultry bounce of “Gang Gang” is the album’s biggest surprise, his gravelly baritone holding down the melodic duties usually relegated to Quavo with unexpected grace.

It’s still a joy to hear the Migos rap, which is why it’s especially depressing that Culture II ultimately feels like a drag—a formless grab bag compiled without much care. Perhaps this is a hopelessly old-fashioned way of thinking; after all, there’s nothing stopping anyone from creating a playlist of our own, trimming and rearranging the album’s 24 tracks exactly to our satisfaction. And frankly, given the choice between pleasing critics with concise, thoughtful works like Culture or appeasing every fractured sector of one’s fanbase while boosting sales numbers—well, it’s not exactly a tough call. Maybe the culture is already too deep into its “album as outlet mall” moment—an endless, unedited data dump ready to be whatever we want it to be. But culture and art do not always share the same priorities.

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