beerbongs & bentleys

Beerbongs & Bentleys contains banger after banger; it's an incredible drug-induced album.

On his sophomore album, Post Malone carves out his own niche in the auto-croon field with quality trap production, strong vocal performances, and a bit of a singer-songwriter twist.

As it is, beerbongs & bentleys is unequivocally, completely and utterly superior to a lot of the material released by popstars he finds himself compared to or forced to play in the same ball-pit as.

At times it’s almost impressive how long an album called Beerbongs & Bentleys can go without cracking a smile. It is more assured and impressive than its predecessor, Stoney, but it’s also more exhausting.

He is by all objective measures just not good. I do want to convince you though that he is, for better or worse, just a notch above average.

Beerbongs & Bentleys is an apt reflection of his lavish lifestyle and his subsequently begotten hardships, but its attempts at sincerity work only when Post Malone stops trying so hard.

I won’t be stressed the next time Post Malone comes on in public, but I’ll still wonder what went wrong that I can only get trace elements of rap in the officially sanctioned nutritional regimen.

The makings of an incredible album are here on beerbongs & bentleys, but we’re just going to have to wait until Post has enough money, success, and artistic freedom to be able to make that special album.

The 22-year-old singer makes the rockstar lifestyle sound beige on this directionless second album.

With sing-song melodies and dreamy trap-lite beats, Post's songs re-package existent rap trends for people who might not particularly like rap at all – including, it would seem, the artist himself.

There are powerful choruses and strong vocals from the chart-topping, face-tattooed rapper, but his guests show him up as a weak lyricist.

Its tracks are so homogenous, so repetitive, that you’re almost given the impression of being trapped in some claustrophobic, M. C. Escher-like landscape of stairwells and hallways, but without any of the tension or excitement that that situation would elicit. When one song ends, another begins – same chords, same tone, same melody, same Autotune – and the cycle begins again, like a slightly nauseating merry-go-round.