Lil Durk’s bold fourth studio album, Love Songs 4 the Streets 2, came at a transitional point in the resilient Chicago rapper and drill progenitor’s career. The 2019 project sets up a major commercial resurgence on 2020’s Just Cause Y’all Waited 2 and finds him sharpening his delivery and broadening his thematic scope, which is more extensive and nuanced than many of his street-rap contemporaries. Driven by streaming juggernauts like “Bora Bora” and “Green Light”, the album laments Durk’s difficulties in the major-label system, unaware of significant breakthroughs yet to come. In a comprehensive musical sense, Love Songs for the Streets 2 is one of Durk’s most diverse releases. Its production comes from a cross-section of producers with distinct proclivities, including drill stalwart and longtime Durk affiliate Chopsquad DJ, Roc Nation’s soulful Jahlil Beats (on “Bougie” featuring Meek Mill, the producer’s collaborator of choice) and the stylistically ambidextrous Drake favourite Boi-1da, who turns in one of the more unusual beats on the project, synthesising rhythmic implications from reggaeton and four-on-the-floor American club music on the lively A Boogie wit da Hoodie team-up “U Said”. Love Songs 4 the Streets 2 is also a masterclass in Durk’s flexible flow and his ability to slickly transition from melodic to straight-ahead rapping. “U Said” finds him dynamically ricocheting between the two, riding a fast tempo and spaced-out synth beds and adopting heartfelt melismatic phrasing reminiscent of Kevin Gates. In his delivery, Durk tends to respond acutely to his collaborators: on the menacing “Die Slow”, he and 21 Savage seem to be competing to see who can sound more icy cool. Though all of the songs touch on loss and the brutality of gang life, musically breezier detours like “Rebellious”, with its buoyant, singsong hook, break up the more dirge-like moments. Elsewhere, cuts like the Auto-Tune-drenched Nicki Minaj collaboration “Extravagant” get about as romantic (read: explicit) as anything Durk has released. The latter creates a contrast to the threatening and elegiac tones of much of the rest of the tape, helping provide the sense of cinematic breadth that was central to Durk’s music during this period.