A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie review | Me vs. Myself

★★☆☆☆

A Boogie originally pushed the original release date for Me vs. Myself back to December 9 after it emerged Drake and 21 Savage’s surprise collaboration, Her Loss, was scheduled to drop at the same time. Even then, there seemed to be very little conversation around the release for an artist of A Boogie’s size.

Real name Artist Dubose, A Boogie’s charted highly since his eponymous debut mixtape, 2014’s Artist, each of his projects containing at least a couple of big hits. 

In recent times, A Boogie has pitted his stage name versus his real name. Through the ‘A Boogie vs Artist’ series, the Harlem native uses an alter ego to rap and sing about different topics, polarising the vulnerability and heartbreak of ‘Artist’, to the more braggadocious, bold ‘A Boogie’. His last full length album, B4 AVA, arrived just over a year ago, and again references this ongoing battle. 

Me vs. Myself is a continuation of this theme, even if it’s now given a different title. Nonetheless, this is an album that never really takes off. The 22-track project alternates rigidly between the two personas, A Boogie and Artist going back and forth. This means that it struggles for flow, the narrative of internal rivalry now a bit boring and overdone.

The impressive array of guest stars don’t save the project. ‘Water (Drowning 2)’ with Kodak Black – the follow up to their wildly successful 2017 single ‘Drowning’ – is underwhelming, neither rapper anywhere near their best. Heavily ladened with autotune, the song just sounds like a bit of a whining mess. 

 

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Tory Lanez sounds sharp on ‘Take Shots’, despite his ongoing legal difficulties, but it’s still subpar songwriting, the verses just talking about sex and making unsubtle plays on the word ‘shots’. 

Lil Durk appears twice and fits well, the pair’s individual sounds complementing one another. The stand out track for me, however, is the single ‘Man in the Mirror’, the downbeat, hypnotic track highlighting the qualities that do exist on Me vs. Myself.

The album’s never bad, and I’m sure massive fans of A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie will find plenty to enjoy in the hour and nine minutes of music, but the peaks don’t reach the same heights as they have in the past.