AI Youngboy 2 Album: A Review

“I feel like I’m Gucci Mane in 2006”: if one line from Youngboy Never Broke Again’s mixtape AI Youngboy 2 could represent the project as a whole, this would be potentially the most reasonable answer.
 As his latest full-length project since Realer, AI Youngboy 2 comes in the midst of a surge in Youngboy’s musical popularity – and notoriety. 
The Baton Rouge born rapper is one of the faces of the revival of Southern hip-hop, marked by it’s patent  home-bred grit and grime. Artists such as Megan Thee Stallion, NLE Choppa, DaBaby, and Kevin Gates have led the rebirth of the sound of the modern-day dirty south, with sex, drugs, bleeding love and inevitable death – by gun or God – being the overarching themes of their music. 
Not only does AI Youngboy 2 fall right onto this spectrum, it embodies it. Producers such as Mike WILL Made-It, 17OnDaTrack, India Got Them Beats and D-Roc use trance-like synths and crashing 808s layered on distorted pianos to illustrate the chaos of his daily life, with electric guitars as his own melancholic chorus. 
The mixtape opens up with the Tejano inspired “Carter Son”, where Youngboy balances a career that has taken him to new heights with his hard-knock background, all while trying to keep his sanity. 
On “Rich as Hell”, he appears as a loner in a world of traitors: “Late at night and I can’t sleep/I’m staying up, I’m tossing, turning/That’s them bodies from my temper creeping on me/That’s from me cuttin’ ‘em off and being home all by my lonely/Bricks and bales/I prefer that chopper, it’s gon’ kiss you and won’t never tell.” The possibility of death is a recurring reality for him, and only intensifies with his fame. 
Youngboy presents an aspect of trap music that is often overlooked by popular media: the human side. The emotions he describes are genuine, and can be found in the hearts of many of America’s Black youth. “Lonely Child” is purely a sensitive confession of isolation, with Youngboy acknowledging how those he’s relied on seem to have disappeared as he’s been introduced to a new life. At the closing of the track, he reveals his child-like vulnerability “I need some help because my life been real hard/The way I approached the game, it seem that I’m hard/But I got feelings too just like a lil’ boy.” 
The sole feature on the album comes courtesy of rappers NoCap and Quando Rondo, on “Outta Here Safe”. The trio remind listeners of their ruthless nature that can’t be changed with their newfound luxury lifestyle. This attitude is the sharper edge to AI Youngboy 2, with the project being a tug-of-war between the nightmares of despair Youngboy was raised on and the dreams of riches and comfort he was raised for.
 On the vintage New Orleans reminiscent rack titled “In Control”, Youngboy comes with the fury and gunfire-like flow that gathered his following in the first place. He describes his luxuries and diverse array of guns, an energy that he tried to submerge through drugs on the track “Self Control”. 
The energy of AI Youngboy 2 can be compared to older generations of rappers such as Lil Wayne and Boosie Badazz, though Youngboy comes with a sensitivity that escaped these artists in their most recent days.