I wasn’t a huge fan of Big K.R.I.T’s first lp, “Krit Wuz Here“. Just being honest. Krit is talented and his production was doing him a lot of favors but I wasn’t drinking the kool-aid like some folks. “Hometown Hero” was the real standout track off that first album, even if that Adele song has been around the block a couple of times. Krit made it his own and it showed. Returnof4Eva is a much more balanced album. It less of a mixtape parading as an album and in the age we live in, where it’s really easy for an artist to pass off tapes as albums, this is a good thing.

KRIT is comfortable and confident here in a believeable way or at least in a way that seems more believeable than his previous effort. He’s no longer trying to find an audience, he’s got it (Did that David Banner co-sign help?). With the moderate underground success he’s found, the tape has a very reflective, almost nostalgic tone and nowhere is this more evident than on the first leak and fourth track on the album, “Dreamin’.” The track has a wispy guitar loop with an ethereal vocal sample (“He’s dreamin’ , he’s dreamin’, it’s not for real“) as Krit waxes on about his motivations and how his love affair with hip hop got started. The tape does a lot of jumping back and forth between introspective, “softer” tracks like that and more loud, trunk slapping, gripping wood grain southern snare clap tracks like “My Sub.”

That back and forth is one of Krit’s greastest assests (along with his great production). He sounds at home doing everything here. From the pimpin’ smooth player talk (“I’m majoring in pimpin’/ I’m just rapping on the side“) to the more serious questioning self tracks (“Who cares about life in the highs & lows?/ Maybe I should write another song about pimps and hos“). There aren’t a lot of features but none of them feel inappropriate or misplaced. The remix of “Country Shit” featuring Ludacris and Bun B being a definite highlight, particularly Luda’s verse. Chamillionaire (I never got the Cham hate) and David Banner also drop some good verses. I really don’t have a lot of negative things to say about the album. The album might be just a little bit too long but this is easily the best Krit has ever been and I’m extremely excited about his future. Whether you’re specifically looking for some “intelligent trunk music” or just good music, Returnof4Eva is worth more than a couple spins.

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