SR3MM

SR3MM ends up being their clearest personal statement yet, finding their voices almost coincidentally.

Taken as a whole--SR3MM is nearly two hours long--the album is a serious time investment. However, broken up into three parts as intended, it provides a trio of easily digestible bites that gives Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi freedom to indulge their own artistry while maintaining their bond as a duo.

Their music has grown lusher, their cadences more complex, making the leap to Sr3mm less of a stretch that it might seem. Where recent marathons like Migos' gratuitous Culture II felt more about streaming algorithms than art, Sr3mm rarely wears out its welcome.

Exactly how delicately balanced their chemistry together is becomes apparent on the two solo albums that round out this three disc set. Both are decent in their own right but pale in comparison to the group disc. [Jul 2018, p.62]

[Swae Lee's] “Swaecation” is the most liquid, the most soft-focus of the three. (The duo album is a close second.) At times verges on the quiet-storm R&B of the early 1980s, though he is far more flexible with tempos than Post Malone, and sometimes veers toward ecstatic 1980s synth-pop. By contrast, Slim Jxmmi’s solo album, “Jxmtro,” is a more conventional contemporary hip-hop album, buoyant and loose. Sr3mm is long, but listening to it in one sitting, on its own, from top to bottom, is not how it’s truly designed to be engaged with.

At this stage, both brothers realize they work better together, though SR3MM's unique format allows for a distinct look at the two very different parts of what make Rae Sremmurd tick.

By nature the album highlights their aesthetic differences, but at no point makes a strong argument for their separation. Still, it’s a bit of an awkward listen, with each of the three discs displaying obvious charms but none following through on its promise completely.

The result is a decent triple album, but it would have been better yet boiled down to an eclectic single album, the best solo tracks sitting alongside the group efforts: not so much reining ambitions in as realising less is sometimes more.