Consumer Guide Album

Pusha T: Daytona [G.O.O.D. Music EP, 2018]
G.O.O.D. Music's weekly-EP gimmick was basically a neat excuse to fuck around and call it art. But as a compression device, the seven-song limit was perfect for framing and accentuating its CEO's narrow strengths in an opener the series never got near to topping. Pusha's verbal pride is a formal passion that rejects both excess and half measures as he enunciates every syllable in his impassive, sibilant flow, and no objective observer would deny how skilled he is at narrativizing the cocaine hustle. But where 45 minutes of his unflinching tales wear ordinary humans out, the EP format compels him to hone every line, as in, oh: "If you ain't energized like the bunny for drug money / Or been paralyzed by the sight of a drug mummy / This ain't really for you, this for the Goya Montoya / Who said I couldn't stop, then afforded me all the lawyers." It also helps that the label owner provides the hardest and simplest beats he's stooped to in years. And that Pusha hates Drake so much he compares him to Trump. A