Good Intentions / NAV / May 8, 2020
- Joshua Yoo
- May 14, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 13, 2020
Following his yearly release schedule, NAV has delivered “Good Intentions,” an album that many were hoping would be a major change in form and quality from his previous work. While there is some evidence of improvement, unfortunately the vast majority of the album suffers from the same glaring and fundamental issues that have defined NAV’s music for all of his career. NAV takes repetition and monotony to an unprecedented level, as his strictly formulaic approach to music is found in nearly every aspect of the album. The songwriting throughout the project is not only lacking in creativity and ingenuity, but is also completely devoid of individuality. The lyrics are one-dimensional, focusing solely on the world of NAV’s wealth, and thus it misses the mark on revealing any sort of personality. Vocally, NAV makes no effort in improving his delivery, still heavily reliant on his auto-tuned mechanical voice that still offers little to no emotional conviction (“Did You Wrong”). His flow, especially on the verses, is essentially cookie-cutter, using the same three or four note fragment and repeating it over and over again with sparsely-written one-liners (“Status”). And while the feature list is considerably stacked, many of the guest verses fall flat, stylistically limited by NAV’s basic song structures (“No Debate”). The production style is typical for NAV—spacey and atmospheric trap instrumentals—but there is definitely effort and creative thought put into the instrumentation on many of the tracks, a high point for “Good Intentions”. This may indeed be NAV’s best album in his overall discography, but given the context, this statement doesn’t really mean much. NAV has barely made any improvements on his musical weaknesses, and if he continues to remain fixated on his mundane artistic style, expectations for future projects need to be considerably lowered.
Best Track(s): Run It Up, Recap Lowlight(s): Brown Boy, Proud Of Me?, Did You Wrong, Overdose
SCORE: 3/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8wZOEuPX38
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