Don Toliver: OCTANE

"Even with all his maximalist verve; his Easy Rider and Sons of Anarchy-style leather regalia; his shoulder-rubbing with Gap Band legend Charlie Wilson; the superproducers spawning at his studio's threshold-even in the face of all that, Don Toliver's allure can be boiled down to something simpler: the fundamentals of his sound. He's adept at layering catchy hooks over lush beds, and his effortless melodies bounce between octaves."

"OCTANE, Toliver's fifth album, arrives as he's still searching for a foothold in rap's superstar tier. It follows 2024's five-disc, 20-track Hardstone Psycho, in a hip-hop landscape where patience for highly manufactured event albums is running thin. In its attempt to be conceptual Hardstone Psycho wound up sticking too rigidly to one aesthetic, but it was the hollowness of the lyrics that turned the whole thing into an ordeal."

"Conversely, Toliver's 2021 breakout, Life of a DON, toed the line between intimate and expansive while avoiding the churn of standard melodic rap by pairing polished production with Houston backroom falsettos and runs. It's a strange balancing act: His music lands better when it focuses on little more than curating a vibe, switching on autopilot for a smooth ride with only the night sky overheard."

Don Toliver relies on fundamentals: layered catchy hooks, lush production, and octave-spanning melodies that elevate melodic emptiness into grandeur. OCTANE, his fifth album, continues a search for rap superstardom after the sprawling 2024 Hardstone Psycho, which suffered from conceptual rigidity and hollow lyrics. Toliver's 2021 breakout Life of a DON balanced intimacy and expansiveness through polished production and Houston-style falsettos. OCTANE maps a rally-car aesthetic and alternates between moody trap ballads and booming hype tracks, sometimes using spectacle as a distraction from Toliver's strongest mode: a moody crooner whose disaffected delivery can become mesmerizing.

Read at Pitchfork