Why rap's most average figure gets treated like its worst:
I never really understood the story of "The Ugly Duckling".
Colorism aside, the "ugly" duckling seemed just like every other duckling to me. They waddled the same, they swam the same, and although the ugly duckling sounded different from the others, I would probably still objectively classify them as fairly similar.
So when I hear criticisms like, "Nav is hip-hop's most non-essential character," or "I can not name a more boring rapper in hip-hop than Nav," or "I likened his voice to that of a robot mimicking the sounds of a human voice," I think of "The Ugly Duckling".
All of the aforementioned criticisms came in a one-minute stretch from one person, Anthony Fantano.
Fantano, one of music's most respected reviewers, is usually harsh, but, in the case of Nav, he serves as a megaphone for the people. However, it seems like most people are attacking Nav's music to mask their real issue with the rapper--Nav's appearance doesn't match his lyrics.
Despite dressing like other rappers, displaying the same subject matter as other rappers, and even rapping alongside the rappers he mirrors, Nav gets criticized unlike any other rapper. And much like the ugly duckling with his first family, no matter how similar Nav is to his peers, he will never get treated like his peers.
Let's take a cheap template look at the gradual decline of Nav's career:
As you can see, Nav's career both peaked and plummeted at the hands of Travis Scott's "Biebs in The Trap".
"BITT" was Nav's second push into the mainstream spotlight, and unlike the first push when Kylie Jenner posted "Fell in Love" on her Snapchat, Nav had more than three songs for fans to refer back to. Nav saw a 310 percent increase in fans after Jenner's snap and was introduced to over 100 million new people following the "BITT" video.
Despite Nav single-handedly producing the song and making Travis Scott sound like an afterthought on his own song, "BITT" was the beginning of the end for Nav.
Instead of being applauded for his standout feature and gaining recognition as a budding star, Nav's appearance was all anyone would talk about. From Best Buy employee jokes to grown Asahd comparisons, everyone who saw Nav saw someone who didn't fit into the lines he was rapping.
After Bad Habits dropped, a friend of mine pointed out how "ever since Nav stopped saying the N-word on his songs, he hasn't been the same." The observation perfectly summarized Nav's career arc and helped me figure out why Nav doesn't get the same leeway of other trap artists—his looks don't allow it.
The above tweet captures how a majority of people feel about Nav in comparison to some of trap's top artists. Like the ugly duckling, Nav does what his peers do, but he's not who his peers are.
Nav's look doesn't allow him to spark the same feelings that similar rappers can create.
But no Nav hater will admit the role his looks play; likely out of fear of sounding anti-brown boy, everyone who criticizes Nav refuses to admit that his looks are the main reason that his music is hated. Instead, the narrative is centered around how terrible his music, when in reality, the only terrible thing about Nav's music is how terribly average it is.
Nav's refusal to be different from his peers is my biggest criticism and is the one he deserves to be hit with.
Nav raps about the same thing as 75 percent of rappers: drugs, money, sex, and clothes.
With a song dedicated to his mom and an average song time of fewer than three minutes, Bad Habits is the industry-plant template for trap albums. The project follows the successful rap album algorithm to the tee.
The only thing missing was the album/merch/tour bundle that distorts the first-week sales and boosts the album to No.1.
Oh.
Nevertheless, Nav's unoriginality only furthers the point that the only thing separating the Brown Boy from his peers is the fact that he's a brown boy. Much like "The Ugly Duckling", it's borderline racist, but it's the truth Nav has faced since "BITT".
Depending on what he does next, the career of Nav can be looked back on in one of two ways.
He can be viewed as a martyr for the next splash of Indian rappers, or he can be the roadblock example that stops the next talented brown boy.
Bad Habits Rating: 4/10