Digital Roses Don't Die
Have you ever been in the kind of relationship that makes you want to sing? By the sounds of *Digital Roses Don’t Die*, revered Mississippi MC and producer Big K.R.I.T. has. And if he’s not in that relationship at the moment, he’s done his best to immortalize it across a 17-track follow-up to 2019’s *K.R.I.T. IZ HERE*. Save for maybe “It’s Over Now,” the whole of the project is about how special K.R.I.T. thinks a particular someone is. Love is the message, and he’s pushed his voice to the outer reaches of funky R&B crooning to deliver it. We don’t actually get a name for the object of his affection, but he details the phases of his infatuation, including crushing (“Just 4 You,” “Cum Out to Play”), courtship (“Southside of the Moon,” “Show U Right”), and full-blown lovesickness (“So Cool,” “Boring,” “More Than Roses”). Moments of actual rapping are few and far between here, but bars reveal themselves in the interludes, each of which contain spoken-word poetry.
Though the rapper takes questionable creative risks on his fifth album, he’s still capable of bringing scenes to life with a wide eye and a sharp pen.
To date, Big K.R.I.T. has been a dependable, if not predictable rapper whose appeals remained evident across his albums and mixtapes. His la...