Nav’s Emergency Tsunami: NOT GOOD

[Intro: Anthony Fantano, (Cal Chuchesta)]
Ughhhhhhh...

(Okay, say it!)

Ughhhhh, ughhhhhh...

(You better say it, review monkey boy!)

...This new Nav mixtape thing...is...not good.

[Review: Anthony Fantano]
This is the new mixtape from Canadian rapper, singer, and producer Nav, who is teaming up on this one with one-man banger factory Wheezy. You've heard that watermark. "Wheezy outta here!"

Miraculously, this is like Nav's third project this year, because this past spring, within days of each other, he put out Good Intentions, and then a deluxe version of that album which essentially added on another album, Brown Boy 2. So it's definitely been Nav overload this yеar.

Plus, among viewers in my audiencе, there seems to be this growing expectation that anytime Nav even breathes, "Hey, are you gonna give it a NOT GOOD? Are you gonna give it a NOT GOOD? Are you gonna say it's not good are you gonna gonna give it give it a NOT GOOD-D?!"

Okay. All right. Well, the answer, I guess, is...yes.

But honestly, I do understand the temptation and desire for many, with this new release, to maybe see a bit of a silver lining in the cloud of this new project. Maybe see it as not that bad, maybe see Nav as improving. After all, my intimate familiarity with his sound at this point certainly makes it feel that way, especially when I pick up what I think are maybe slight changes and improvements on his sound, which, sometimes, one can misconstrue as, I don't know, an improvement overall just because maybe an artist is doing markedly better than they have in the past. Doesn't necessarily mean that their music is really measuring up to the best stuff out there right now.

I guess what I'm really trying to say right here is that on this new tape, Nav has not really changed. He still has the same low-energy delivery, same tedious flows, same auto-tune that makes him sound like a damn robot, same lyrical content too. "I had no money, now I have lots of money, here are all of the clothes and designers I spend my money on, I do drugs but I kind of want to stop, I don't really want to and I say that I'm going to stop but I keep doing them anyway, and here are all of the explicit references to the tons and tons of sex that I'm having." Things your average rapper references quite often these days, but Nav's greatest sin is he does all of it with absolutely no flair whatsoever.

Still, there is absolutely nothing special about his execution outside of how devoid of anything special it is. Part of me does admire the fact that Nav drops so prolifically despite the incredible amount of pushback he gets from critics and haters on the internet. It's probably true the man is a legend in his own mind. I think you really have to have some balls to brag about all the shows you have booked and the money you're making off of them while we're in the middle of a fricking pandemic where nobody is doing any shows, which is one of many reasons that when I'm listening to Nav I feel less like I'm hearing someone's life story and more like I'm just hearing someone play out, with boring flows, their exaggerated power fantasy.

So despite the overall lack of progress and risk-taking or anything, the only real X factor on this tape is Wheezy, whose production does carry on some tracks, most notably "Friends and Family" and also the Thugger cut "Repercussions", but for the most part these beats kind of sound like the sort of instrumentals that Nav would be riding regardless of what producer he's working with. On top of it, it's not like Wheezy really has the power to make Nav interesting anyway, especially when the beats are coming off kind of mellow. Instrumentally here, we get pretty plain trap rhythms and keyboard progressions much of the time, some of the songs are a little wet and wavy and psychedelic, others are a bit more toned and muscular, but nothing really going too deep in terms of sound play or aggression.

I guess the biggest compliment I can give the production on this thing is that sometimes the beats are so good I just wish that someone else was rapping on them.

And of course, what would a Nav project be without its standout lyrical gems and unimpressive similes, such as:
Gettin' the cheese like cottage
Or this one bar on the second verse of "Nasty" where Nav is talking about this girl he's with, and she's a nasty one, and for whatever reason he brings up her standards, saying that they're not low, they're just okay, which even in context of the other bars in the verse doesn't really make much sense. It just seems like an inadvertent self-own.

"Make It Right Back" features the bar:
Give me nothing but head like Beavis
Which is a level of wordplay that is usually beyond Nav's abilities, but Beavis and Butt-Head and oral sex, not really a cross section I feel like I ever needed.

But the crown jewel of lyricism on this thing goes to "Do Ya Deed", where on the refrain, we have the line:
She gets to the nut like a sunflower seed

The features, of course, typically outshine Nav too, despite the fact that they don't really sound like they're doing anything special. Gunna is a bit more animated than he is, I think Thugger is definitely more in tune with the Wheezy instrumental on "Repercussions", and again, sounds better despite playing it off so low-key and really not being much louder than a whisper in his verse. There's also Lil Baby, who I think sounds more animated and engaging than Nav. The only feature that really hit me like a dud was Lil Keed, who pretty much sounded like a Thugger knockoff on his appearance.

I think the only saving grace of Emergency Tsunami is that it is a little short, it's 30 minutes and change, I guess. Doesn't really overstay its nonexistent welcome.

With Emergency Tsunami, Nav just continues to nail us with this completely soulless filler that, on some level, even he sounds like he's beginning to get bored with. Yeah, this new Nav, it's, uh...not good.