JID ups his trademark technicality and heart on God Does Like Ugly

Since his breakout mixtapes in the mid-2010s, his sputtering, breathless flow has been fluttering on beats like the texture of good ASMR. His nasal tone is a fine wine pairing for southern trap and heavy hits of gospel and hero-worship. Just take “Surround Sound”, the standout single from his previous masterstroke The Forever Story, as it directly lifted the iconic beat from Mos Def’s “Ms. Fat Booty”. No matter the ability or elevated ear he brings to a track, he always makes room for giving flowers to his forebearers.

On the jagged road to heaven, JID is beset on all sides by questions of love, community obligation, and faith; not atypical for a rapper of his success to bring up at this point in his career. Where JID supplies his own touch to the subject matter is in the small army of features and collaborators he lifts with himself on God Does Like Ugly. Friends and former roommates Earthgang, Vince Staples, a currently hotter-than-Hell Clipse, Don Toliver, and more are fathered into the answers he finds, or looks for. And he’s a father now, too, as the closing victory lap “For Keeps” reveals: impressive family already.

What immediately clicks on his newest record here, is that he’s just cracked the code on how to write a great track, as one would hope over a decade in. Choruses catch, he has natural chemistry with every feature, and he changes his flow so much he almost has chemistry simply by himself. Clipse is the obvious standout from features, carrying over the galactic success of this year’s Let God Sort Em Out into a JID-sized bite; Pusha T rapping “I brought white to my hood, shit, I gentrified,” was the record’s second-best dopamine rush. The first being a cameo from Westside Gunn adlibbing the record from the ether on the snarling opener “YouUgly”. If the features were any more high-profile, it would be a harkening to the early-2010s output of a certain Chicago rapper with a directional name I can’t remember. Too bad he died.

From the gospel grandeur of “Glory” and “For Keeps”, to the dynamic use of voice across tracks like “Wholeheartedly” and “Of Blue”, there are more than a few productive connections to that late, great whatever-his-name; it gets to a point where I may as well just pretend JID made Graduation and call it a day. But JID did make God Does Like Ugly, not so much a highwater mark for his own career as it is another high mark relative to every other living, breathing rapper around him. That counts for something.

If there’s an innovation to JID’s sound and style here, it’s present in the multi-phased, emotional epic “Of Blue”, which oscillates between dour choral sections and blues sample chops until it breaks under its own weight. JID is a flawless machine atop it, emotive and relentless, overwhelming and fundamentally simple. It’s a breathtaking track that highlights why JID works while a host of white dreadheads praying to Marshall Mathers don’t. Flash, flow, or not, JID would be a storyteller regardless. The panache, the beats, the features, it’s all just windowdressing for a soul built for worthwhile words.