If you simply want more of the same from one of rap’s most pointed and reflective voices, Personification has what you need with less stakes than before
Release date: November 15, 2024 | Stomp Down/Persona Money Gang | Instagram | Twitter | Stream/Purchase
A new Maxo Kream album is always a cause for celebration and intent listening. Dude is one of my favorite rappers of the current era. His somewhat stoic approach on the mic and the emotional trials he raps about are second to none for me. His last few projects are downright captivating so it was only right to expect more of the same with Personification.
From the opener “Mo Murda”, Maxo’s already employing his lower vocal timbre yet, an ominous partner to the Bone Thugs-N-Harmony lyrical reference and church organs that flank his voice. It’s a dark start to what is, spoiler warning, a really damn good album, but in totality a fair amount lighter than WEIGHT OF THE WORLD. It’s still profoundly personal though. It’s all in the title – Maxo fashioned this album in such a way that it represents his three personas. Trigga Maxo, a throwback to his earlier years of the #Maxo187 tape when he was a much more considerably wilder man in the trenches of gang life. Punken, a nickname of Maxo’s that also graced his debut album in 2018 and has some of my favorite tracks from him. Finally, Emekwanem, his birthname of Nigerian origin, the core of his being and what represents him the most now as a father doing his best to leave a rough life behind.
It’s hard to distill your life down to 44 minutes, even for the most deft and efficient of writers, but Maxo Kream‘s always had a way with words. He is genuinely one of the most affecting and talented storytellers in rap going right now, from the devastating recounting of his youth in “Roaches” to the stark realities of crossing divides with people in prison doing big time and keeping their lives on the outside ticking on “Meet Again”.
Maxo flexes this skill set hella hard once again on the single “Big Hoe Me”, an easy contender for song of the year. It’s got cheeky references like being the ‘Crip John Wick’, but the meat of the track is a story about how the imprisonment of his own immigrant father led to Maxo falling into the hands of a gang in order to survive, and how someone who was supposed to be his guiding ‘big homie’ mentor was not who he seemed and almost got him killed – twice. There’s two beats on this track, the first feeling like an overcast day marked with the slightest optimism fueled by youthful naivete and power from being a foot soldier (‘Fourteen years old, but that pole had me feelin’ grown‘), the second sinks into full-blown somber as Maxo’s story hits its emotional apex after he attempts to get the drop on some opps that ends with way too many close calls with death for him and his pals.
Young Maxo knew showing emotion was a detriment to his work as a Crip, especially when trying to prove himself, so he stifled his fear (‘Can’t show big homie, I’m jabroni, he gon’ treat me like a hoe‘). The twist of the story is his big homie crying in front of him after the climax of the shooting and leaving Maxo to do all the dirty work himself. That moment made him lose all respect for big homie, a moment that only hardened Maxo’s own resolve (‘Nowadays they lame, all the big homies broke‘). It’s sobering and saddening for sure because these are very real stories, at least in how they’re grounded, but Maxo Kream‘s writing and rapping elevates it due to the technicality and agility on display. “Fashitsho” and other songs show how he effectively became a big homie – a real one – for others in his life and crew, something that shouldn’t be as touching as it is, but is.
Of course I have to shout out “Cracc Era”, Maxo Kream‘s second collab with Tyler, The Creator (well, first collab actually – Maxo revealed on the podcast Throwing Fits that this is the first track the two made together). Tyler produced it of course and it’s a Pharrellian beat that pays homage to that school lunch table so many kids put work in on making beats by putting pens and pencils to it to create a rhythm sweeter than the fruit cocktails we used to get (a point driven further home by the single cover art being of both rappers at a young age). Just like the song “BIG PERSONA”, this is a flexathon. Tyler packed bars in his luxury luggage referring to everything from nice-ass PK bikes to the movie Juno to Chips Ahoy cookies, but what’s really impressive is the reference-packed, wordplay-heavy Maxo verse which has the hardest line about guns and church folk since Nas rapped ‘I’m wavin’ automatic guns at nuns‘ on “Back to the Grill”
‘My Hoover Crips shoot Ruger clips, like Ludacris, I throw a bow
I finish him like Liu Kang, I want the brain like Al Snow
I mean the head like cabeza, perky meds on my dresser
Mac 11 at the reverend, sneak in heaven with suppressors’
This unlikely duo really bring some of the best out of each other. Apparently they have a whole mixtape’s worth of material together and I hope to hell we see it in some form eventually.
Speaking of church, another serious moment on Personification is “Walk By Faith”, a song steeped in the contradictions of street life and religion, and the hypocrisy of the latter. Both Maxo and his brother KCG Josh rail against deceiving pastors and how their teachings conflict with the street code they’re supposed to uphold (‘The pastor expect me to sit back and not get some get back/Peace treaty not with that, I gotta get even‘). When Maxo communes with God as he can, but mostly has questions – ‘How He let a grown man kill a little child?/How they just give you life for a murder/But giving less time for rapists and pedophiles?‘ The last two bars are the most telling of where he’s at with it all though: ‘Tryna keep my faith in God, right now, I’m in denial/Switched out my bibles out for some rifles, ain’t talked to God in a while‘. KCG Josh is more blunt with his takes in a collected, fiery verse that’s singed by disgust and betrayal from someone who’s seen some of the worst shit imaginable on a micro level:
‘Catching the holy ghost, that shit faker than Vance McMahon show
Got ’em brainwashed like soap, I told ’em fuck the church, I’m not goin’
I don’t drink wine with crackers, my communion’s Hi-Tech with sweet bread
I don’t worship God or Satan, I worship Josh, I feel like I’m both of ’em
‘Cause I make it rain, raise hell, get a girl, and I take her soul from her
Religion is bullshit, just another way to separate, divide and conquer
If God did all this, then it’s fuck him, ’cause why did you take my brother?’
The other features on Personification go hard too. Fellow Houston rapper BigXthaPlug glides over a snappy Hit-Boy beat on “Smokey”, a spiritual successor of sorts to “Big Worm” from The Persona Tape as both reference the movie Friday as they both rap about what they’ll do once they catch their dealers who haven’t paid up and ducked them – don’t play with their money, Smokey. It also has the catchiest hook on the album. “Higher Than Ever” has an explosive feature from Rob49 who is rapping his ass off not even two seconds into the songs, no pensive intro or room to breathe. I have to mention another of my favorites though, the flow god Denzel Curry, who’s on the closer “Triggaman”, a grimmer take on a classic rap song I’m not gonna name out of an abundance of caution as it’s interpolated in the beat – if you know, you know. Denzel sounds amazing on this eerie trap production though, both rappers showing you their darkest sides we’re lucky to see only through the music.
My only complaints are minor – “Bang The Bus” feels a little empty in the tracklist, it mostly being a song about running trains on women which I’m all for, believe me, but didn’t particularly feel attached to (I did laugh at the line ‘doja pack, stash it in her pussy, call it Doja Cat‘ though), and “Drizzy Draco 2” is similarly weak comparatively to the rest of the album and to the song it’s a sequel to from Brandon Banks. Not quite blemishes and they’re certainly not skips, but I look forward to other songs more on new loops.
Personification is yet another album that’s best viewed through an empathetic lens despite its violent, hedonistic proclivities. I think it’s up to us as listeners and fans to feel the emotions that Maxo Kream was unable to growing up while going through some horrendous and serious shit. While not quite as depressing as some of his previous music, it’s still such a raw picture of hood life that when you have someone like him orating it to you in such a real way, it’s truly affecting, uplifted only slightly by the more party-centric or energetic cuts within it. Rap can be ugly, y’all, but there’s a beauty in people telling their stories like this. The fact this was all done independently, a fact Maxo’s very and rightfully proud of, adds another layer of astonishment to the album for fans like me. Dude is doing just about everything right, setting himself and his growing family up for generational success if the right moves are made so they never have to endure what he has. Next time you question what the point of music like this is, all you have to look at the results and how far the people who make it have come from the trenches – and those are just the lucky ones.
