North Texas Daily

French Montana has been a staple in the game for well over a decade, starting as a South Bronx local legend and turning into one of the best feature artists in the game. His latest album, “They Got Amnesia,” acts as a reminder that he can bring it on for a feature performance, but struggles to hold together solo tracks. 

The album’s start is a slog. Its opener is a voicemail that drags itself into the song “How You King.” The track is full of boisterous filler lines that start a thread that runs throughout the album. Montana invokes some of the greatest rappers of all time and tries to insert himself into the conversation. It seems like he doesn’t understand that to earn a high rank in the game, he needs to utilize his ability and intentiveness, opposed to stale punch lines.

This track relents, throwing “FWMGAB” next in the tracklist, even though it doesn’t fit sonically following the previous track. It makes sense to bring this song in early on since it’s one of Montana’s largest recent hits, but it seems like he wasn’t confident enough in his work to run through more of the album before introducing this song.

Following overplayed “FWMGAB,” “I Don’t Really Care” is enough to elicit a genuine groan. The hook is contrived and the verse is mediocre, once again feeling like filler with an occasionally interesting line mixed in. Following is “Touch the Sky,” which is tolerable because John Legend and Rick Ross do what they need to do as features — however, the track feels a few years too late, like some sort of “B side” that got shoved onto the project.

The first inkling of life on this project comes on “Mopstick” with Kodak Black. Although not an amazing track, it’s a normal Kodak Black performance that changes something in Montana. He goes from constantly stating how good he is as an artist, to showing why he makes a good feature artist. Montana truly is the Rap Gumby since he fits in well next to popular artists. When he’s in his lane, he’s unstoppable.

After “Mopstick,” the album goes into overdrive with three perfect tracks following. Seeing Montana once again take a backseat in his own album results in the project’s best tracks. It rises from the trenches with a posthumous Pop Smoke feature to a strip club anthem with Doja Cat, quickly moving into a well-executed drill track with Fivio Foreign. Somehow, the three flow together to give a reminder of why Montana still has a seat in the rap game as the glue of some important tracks.

“Didn’t Get Far” follows this run, effectively cementing Montana at his best. He’s braggadocious, clever and interesting, then he slips out to steal the show with some of the best lines on the album.

The rest of the album is hit or miss with Montana having tracks like “Fraud,” “Bag Season” and “Push” where Montana brings his best. On the other hand, he has tracks like “Prayer (Skit)” which feels like an undeserved and ill-placed DMX ripoff, “Appreciate Everything” which is an awful mess and “Losing Weight,” also rife with the same issues as other tracks. “Losing Weight” is specifically awful considering Montana fumbles the bag after ripping off one of Cam’ron’s greatest dope dealer songs.

In this album, Montana is trying to establish himself as a leader in the game when in actuality he’s a secondary character who can occasionally hold his own. This album could have come together to nicely construct a mixtape, but it’s not a coherent album. 

Alex’s final rating: 2/5