DAYTONA

The new Pusha T album is more assured and therefore effective than the last Clipse album, nowhere near the focused brilliance of their first two. All production is handled by Kanye West who’s likewise harking back to his glory days with assorted updates on his College Dropout sound. [Jul 2018, p.62]

Daytona stands loud and proud among Pusha T's best work. [Aug 2018, p.91]

A work of sheer hip-hop utility and performance.

Any flaws feel minor, and they only lightly chip at this monolithic piece of work, where commonplace rap stories breathe in ways they haven’t before. The mystery is this record’s greatest strength, and it lives in every crevice, spicing up what could otherwise just be a collection of especially hard bars.

This is not the King Push we were led to expect, but it is a quality record in its own right.

Kanye West grants taut, grimace-inducing beats, assisted infrequently by Mike Dean and Andrew Dawson, enabling Pusha to pack each one of the seven tracks with characteristically trenchant and terse rhymes. The lyrical focus is similarly laser-sharp.

Another rare instance of an artist coming up with a classic a decade after what seemed like the peak of his career (Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury), and the only thing that could’ve made it better was if he pre-released “Infrared” so that Drake could’ve responded and we could’ve had an album with “The Story of Adidon” on it.

Despite the hardcore gangsta rap nature of the album, the hooks are surprisingly unapologetic in their hookiness.

It’s evident that Pusha T is at his most confident on DAYTONA; his rhymes carry confidence and clarity paired with a high head and a release that was well worth the three-year waiting period.

While DAYTONA could easily have been Pusha-T’s victory lap, it only builds on the heft of his weighty legacy.

Daytona may stand alone in this moment--particularly in contrast to the woozy, blown-out rap albums dominating the charts because of the primacy of streaming--but it isn’t as effective as “My Name Is My Name,” Pusha-T’s 2013 full-length solo debut album. Daytona is terser, leaving only nits to pick; say, that the second and third verses of “Come Back Baby” lack the fire and wit of the rest of the album.

The album is claustrophobic and unrelenting, but also intensely exhilarating in its brevity.

The seven-track album goes the distance to add further refinement and distillation to the steely, luxurious drug raps that earned him rap relevance. ... The album is only seven songs and 21 minutes long, but Kanye covers a lot of ground sonically without getting scatterbrained.

In many ways, Daytona replicates Jay-Z and No I.D.'s 2017 rap highlight 4:44: two older men who simply practice their craft, their legacies already secure.

Brevity sharpens the ex-Clipse rapper’s focus, though: rarely has he sounded as urgent, even with his signature laconic tempo, as he does on bravura opener If You Know You Know; or as authoritative as on Santeria, which packs three different movements into under three minutes.

The record’s simple presentation and briefness make for an engaging change from the epic crossover attempts of his prior LP Darkest Before Dawn.

For the first time since going solo, it all feels of a piece. ... The sonic setting he [Kanye West] places this performance from Pusha in is an absolute masterpiece of minimalism.

Aside from the crisply brilliant drug poetry, the production, entirely by Kanye West, is another big draw. This is the roughshod style of cut-and-shut soul samples that characterised Bound 2 and much of Life of Pablo.

While ‘My Name Is My Name’ was a great album, this is a masterclass in design: in contrast to the 20+ track albums of this streaming era, Kanye’s ruthless editing ensures every song, every bar and every sample have purpose.

All the controversy gives elements of DAYTONA some delicious extra novelty, though thankfully its core ingredients are more than fulfilling on their own.