When it comes to pure performance, JID’s voice has rarely been more elastic. The scope of the project makes it easy to occasionally lose the plot, but the raps and production are strong enough to draw focus away from its awkward sequencing. Forever is a literal and thematic sequel to The Never Story, providing what JID recently described to Complex as “a good piece of origin story.” He’s spoken about his family before, but never with the verve he brings to a story about him and his six siblings fighting a small army outside a New Orleans bar on “Crack Sandwich,” or a dissection of the way his success strains his relationship with one of his sisters on “Sistanem.” Like The Never Story, some tracks are bookended with recordings of family and friends that range from candid conversations to demands for him to drop the album.
That’s a lot to cover in any context, but it isn’t his first time piecing this together. Forever is an ambitious and overwhelming album, a sprawling and sometimes frustrating bridge between JID’s upbringing and his place within hip-hop canon and Black history at large. There are verses performed in multiple voices there are heartfelt ballads he flexes, digs further into his family history, and shares scattered thoughts on the modern Black experience over songs with multiple beat changes. On “Raydar,” the second track on his new album The Forever Story, JID explicitly calls attention to his range for the first time in his career: “I got the shit you could play for your mama/I got the shit you could play for the hoes/I got the shit you could sell to the trappers/In Decatur with the ’K and the Colt.” It’s been nearly four years since JID’s last solo project, 2018’s DiCaprio 2, and five since his 2017 breakout The Never Story the time away has him aching to display tricks old and new.
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