Lil Pump’s new album is a wreck you can’t help but look at

On Lil Pump’s sophomore album, he brags about being addicted to drugs before the age of 10, dropping out in ninth grade, and not knowing how to read.

Lil Pump is a Colombian-American 18-year-old rapper from Florida who rose to fame on SoundCloud and then on the charts with the triple platinum song “Gucci Gang.”

His new album “Harverd Dropout” includes some of his other hits like “Esketit” and “I Like It,” which features Kanye West.

The name of the album was a play on a running joke that he dropped out of Harvard to save the rap game, even donning a Harvard Medical School lab coat with the name Dr. Pump on social media.

Alas, Pump did not make it past ninth grade and on this album, he seems to flaunt this fact. The theme of the entire album is about how school was useless to him because he dropped out but still has money, girls, cars and fame.

He talks about how when he was in school, he would drink lean in class, hotbox in the bathrooms and how he all-around hated the teachers. On the song “Be Like Me,” he even goes as far as saying he doesn’t know how to read.

“I’m a millionaire but I don’t know how to read (nope!),” Pump sings.

Pump is definitely an enigma. It’s hard to tell if he is self-aware about how ridiculous he sounds and if this is all a of parody of himself or a meta-joke.

Although, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that he actually doesn’t know how to read.His bars are weak and repetitious, exclusively talking about the same things over and over again on all of his songs: dropping out, girls, money, cars, drugs and fame.

These are of course the very pillars that make up a lot of rap music, and it doesn’t make a project bad if an artist talks about these things. But , if they are expressed in the simplest way possible, repeatedly with no variety in the delivery, it comes off stale, boring and mind-numbing. It is the kind of album where you can listen to the first three songs and get a good idea of the entire project.

It doesn’t help that he lacks flow, cadence and variety in his cadence, making the songs boring to listen to. Along with his overly simplistic bars and delivery, his rhyming sticks to a very basic pattern as well.

The song “Fasho Fasho” exemplifies all of these faults in Pump’s style.

“Pop so much Molly, I think I damaged my brain (Woo) / Sippin’ on drank while I switch lanes (Switch lanes) / Iced out Rollie with a big face (Iced out),” Pump sings.

It also says a lot that every feature on this album, including Quavo, Lil Wayne, YG, 2 Chainz and longtime collaborator Smokepurpp, clearly outshine him in every way.

A silver lining of this project is the production, which is all around good, simple SoundCloud-trap beats. When you listen to the songs without listening to what he is saying in the lyrics, you have to admit they are catchy.

These two aspects of this project can create the illusion of an alright album but when you look deeper, there’s much to be desired. When looking further into his lyrics, you find that besides being repetitive, they are also questionable.

The song “Drug Addicts,” which features actor Charlie Sheen in its music video, exemplifies this best.

“I been smokin’ since I was 11 (Ooh, 11) / I been poppin’ pills since I was seven (Chyeah, I was seven),” Pump sings.

This makes the listening experience strange because instead of feeling lit, I was just wondering where his parents were, if Child Protective Services got involved and why he’s bragging about any of this.

This kind of content could also be seen as Pump being self-aware and reclaiming his childhood experiences, making fun of the fact that he’s been an addict since before puberty.

Though the question remains about irony in his lyrical content, it is clear that Pump’s songs are catchy and nothing more.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Gladi Suero is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at gladi.suero@uconn.edu.