JID - God Does Like Ugly

The rain couldn’t understand it

The pain made them understand, shit

The sun tried to understand, the gun made me understand

The wind tried whisperin’ the warnin’

The land shakin’, plus the rhythm is enormous

All the forces like a portal to a vortex

Connected to the stars, just projecting where we part at

Some albums are thrilling in the moment, and it's easy to consider them truly remarkable, only to see them scaled down later. Comparison with an artist's subsequent albums is one of the main reasons for these reassessments, at least in this writer's experience: it seemed like an absolute peak, yet it turns out you can still climb higher, as if it wasn't the summit after all but just base camp.

“The Forever Story” (2022) still holds up, to the point that it's still reasonable to count it among hip-hop's recent masterpieces, as per OndaRock's rankings. His vivid, multifaceted southern style returns on this “God Does Like Ugly”, his fourth studio album, written under the pressure of someone who's already caught the attention of critics and audiences alike and now has to prove his worth all over again. He pulls it off, but…

As a rapper, JID remains a virtuoso with few equals, able to be precise and dynamic while staying both impeccable and creative. His rap is a synthesis of the southern style of OutKast and Clipse, with some nods to Kendrick Lamar, Denzel Curry and Pusha T's solo career. The production, handled by a team so big it amounts to a small army and includes Thundercat, is lush, varied and disorienting: it embraces a vision of hip-hop that ranges from gospel to the most distorted trap.

Then there are the songs. Shapeshifting and unsettling tracks like “YouUgly” (with Westside Gunn), grandly maximalist ones like “Glory”, or straightforward, powerful, turn-it-up-to-eleven cuts like “WRK” and “Gz”. Or, again, athletic flow exercises like “On McAfee” with Baby Kia.

Over the more classic beat of “Community” (featuring a resurrected Clipse), amid vocalizations and funk guitar, that storytelling ability we already know resurfaces too. On the frantic, electronic beat of “Sk8” (with Ciara and EarthGang), which winks at Miami bass*, it recalls OutKast's classic “B.O.B”.

There's still plenty of room for a more atmospheric, emotional side, delivered to the listener through elaborate tracks, whether digital and futuristic (“What We On” with Don Toliver) or more hybrid, like the blend of classical strings and warped vocals on “Wholeheartedly” (with 6lack and Ty Dolla Sign), or the ghostly folk ballad that opens “Of Blue” (with Mereba) before it morphs into another mutant strain of southern hip-hop. On one of the tracks from this more reflective side, “No Boo” with Jessie Reyez, he even raps in Spanish.

The most elaborate track comes almost at the end, with “K-Word” (feat. Pastor Troy): three songs in one, first a mumble rap with a slurred delivery and Hans Zimmer-like tension, then an angry, conscious trap section, and finally a dreamlike coda that explodes into… a music box.

So is “God Does Like Ugly” the new “The Forever Story”? No, even though it's an important confirmation. Less colossal in scale, it's an album that reveals a lot about the social context the rapper grew up in, through a reading of his own experience that balances reflection with communicative power. And it's perhaps less consistent and cohesive, without ever being sloppy or unfocused. Ultimately, “God Does Like Ugly” is diminished mostly by comparison with its predecessor, which announced the arrival of a true virtuoso to the hip-hop scene.

* A form of hip-hop designed for dancing, developed in Miami in the late 1980s with strong electro influences.

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27/10/2025