Moneybagg Yo Balances Pain and Pleasure on ‘Hard To Love’

Memphis rapper’s latest deals with addiction and delivers some bangers.

With seventeen albums and mixtapes to his name, Moneybagg Yo has long established himself as one of the true pillars of modern-day Memphis hip hop. The rapper took a hiatus of sorts after the release of his excellent 2021 Gangsta’s Pain, a highly polished yet soulful effort that deepened his gruff, loner persona on relatable and explosive hits such as the ultra-fun revenge anthem “Time Today,” Now, he’s back with a vengeance on one of his most personal offerings to date, Hard to Love.

Hard to Love opens with a mighty, slow piano and violin-backed introduction as we hear Bagg take aim at naysayers and gossip hounds, rapping, “Look at Bagg, think he puttin’ on/he really ain’t that hard, I just like a couple songs/he only make music if it’s a social media trend/he ain’t did shit to them nigga who don’ killed his friend.” It’s the fiery, passionate, and defiant conviction in his delivery that drives home a well-worn topic with fresh urgency.

He addresses many hardships on Hard to Love, most powerfully his battle with addiction to codeine. From start to finish, he alludes to his problem through one-off lines and the eerily refreshing sound of him pouring some ice-cold lean in a styrofoam cup. On “No Show” he explores drugs as an all-too-common coping mechanism for dealing with heavy losses. It’s not hard to empathize with him when you hear him rap bars like, “I fill my body up with drugs ‘fore I even eat (Go)/Percocets, Xans, codeine, you don’t wanna see what I see (Nah)/Ever seen a nigga OD? He ain’t wake up out of his sleep (Damn)/Can you imagine how that made me feel? (You can’t)/Tryna kick the cup for real and cut back on these pills (Shake it)/Tryna fight it, fight it, but I’m deep in that field.”

Thankfully, Moneybagg Yo always does a great job of balancing pain and pleasure thanks to his well-polished skill for delivering fun, earworm-producing hits. The brooding “Ocean Spray” is a certified banger; the nimbleness of his flow is as smooth as a slow ride through the city in a Rolls Royce Wraith. Songs where he foregrounds his sultry machismo–like his collaboration with Future, “Keep It Low” and “Quickie,” which samples Lil Wayne’s mixtape classic “PMW”–help make Hard to Love a fun project to ride to as the summer creeps in.

Yet, for all of Moneybagg Yo’s strengths as a top-tier wordsmith, as well as his knack for turning relatable topics into potential commercial hits and inspiring personal anthems, Hard To Love feels limited compared to his most recent work. At a swollen 20 songs and 55 minutes, the sameness of its subject matter and the lack of diversity in its production causes the music to lose impact and energy, despite the hard-nosed honesty of Bagg’s lyrics. Even though A Gangsta’s Pain was longer at 22 songs, the diversity of its features and sound made for a more compelling listen. With a shorter and more focused tracklist, Hard to Love could have landed among his best work. It definitely continues Moneybagg Yo’s run of consistently solid projects. A few more change-ups and a little risk-taking would have made his latest effort easier to love.

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