Fetty Wap - Zoovier

Pitchfork 64

New Jersey rapper Fetty Wap reached complete cultural saturation with his surprise hit “Trap Queen,” a love story with a crack core that swept through suburbs and schoolyards all the same. Before long it was getting Vox explainers and an Ed Sheeran cover, and then Fetty was singing it on stage with Taylor Swift at stadiums. It charted in the Top 10 in Belgium and Denmark. His success ballooned enough that he started crossing milestones only held by megastar rappers like Lil Wayne and Eminem: Three songs charted in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10 and three in the Top 20. But a fourth single never caught hold, and soon he was making a mixtape with French Montana, Coke Zoo. This February, he received a few cursory Grammy nominations and his self-titled debut was finally certified platinum, but his visibility was waning. By August, he was guest starring on “Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood,” alongside Nicki Minaj’s spurned ex Safaree Samuels. Ubiquity can be a fleeting thing.

It isn’t the most precipitous decline in rap history or even the most unusual rap career arc for a would-be star, but it would appear Fetty Wap is nearing a crossroads. What Fetty does next is crucial to whether or not he sustains his success, or just becomes the “Trap Queen” Guy. Though promising sales and streams for his debut appear to indicate a healthy base eager for a proper follow-up, it’s just as likely that the album was merely the beneficiary of the house of mirrors that is “album-equivalent units.” His latest release, Zoovier, is a 19-track sampler mixing his trap balladry with more traditional trap bangers. To avoid a Fetty Wap retread, there is significantly more rapping, which, unfortunately, produces more than his fair share of bars like “Bitch I’m Papa Smurf, I got my money right/Got a Super Soaker for her water ride.”

But if you wade through some of the cringy lyrics (on “King Zoo”: “I put the molly in her shit hole/And watch it light up like a disco”), the straight-up boring ones, the more grating moments, and the lulls here or there provided by songs like “Bad Lil Bitch,” there’s a more compact offering that recalls his most invigorating uses of Auto-Tune and his most charming performances. A song like “Instant Friends,” with its harmony fills and subtle come-ons, is magnetic in its delicate use of social cues, yet it’s lined with DM-violating blunt talk. “Don’t Love Me” and “Hate You,” a pair of gummy synth delights, are perfect complements, in sound and subject. The only true ballad on the tape, “Shorty,” is a reimagining of Plies and T-Pain’s “Shawty” that is as much an exhibitions for the ad-libs as it is for his full-bodied croons.

When it hits, Zoovier is a reminder of just how malleable Fetty Wap’s voice is, flipping from flirtatious to tender to outright lovestruck in a blink. But this is a bloated release that doesn't play to those strengths enough, and his boasts all start to run together after a while: exotic cars, exotic women, having sex with exotic women in exotic cars. It isn’t just that he’s a ball of rap cliches; it’s that he doesn’t make any of them seem fun. Fetty isn’t a very imaginative writer, and he relies primarily on feel, so it’s odd that he would intentionally tie one hand behind his back with so many melody-less raps. Zoovier is further evidence that Fetty is best (and perhaps solely effective) as a trap romantic. Why ruin a good thing? If this tape is some kind of beta test for the Next Gen Fetty Wap, here’s hoping he opts to just stick to the formula that swept the nation.