JID
God Does Like Ugly
DREAMVILLE
JID’s first mixtape, Cakewalk, was released in 2010. That’s 15 years of writing and developing verses. Destin Choice Route has been a great rapper for many of those years, but on God Does Like Ugly, the Atlanta emcee has become a master of the form. What’s evident from the start is the way he’s able to languidly maneuver between different rhyming styles on each track with ease, and never at the expense of the music. Some might consider God Does Like Ugly less cohesive or uniform, but it all seems purposeful—it may be jarring to hear rhyme schemes that don’t fit like perfect puzzle pieces, but this incongruousness adds texture, reinforcing the gritty themes of the album.
God Does Like Ugly takes us to the cutthroat world of Atlanta, where JID philosophizes on the question of what this is all even for. This existential crisis arises from a concept which he cleverly reveals at the end of the album—although his religious convictions ultimately guide him to a path of salvation, it’s his recognition of becoming a father that gives him resolution and purpose in the end. But like any good storyteller, he starts at the beginning, before this epiphany, setting the stage with “YouUgly” going to the depths of hell like Dante before him. Producers TU!, SHROOM, Christo, Childish Major, Luke Crowder, and Akil Pratt create a soundscape on the opening track that makes us feel the stakes of JID’s version of hell, a dog-eat-dog system that wasn’t built for marginalized people like him or his family.
He juxtaposes his meteoric rise as a rapper with his brother’s incarceration on the next track, “Glory,” showing us that by the shake of the dice it could’ve been the other way around. He counts his blessings and takes pride in his hard work, but still expresses how coming up in a rough part of Atlanta was no joke. He explores how witnessing the death of a friend impacted him in “Community,” as Clipse’s Malice mocks rappers who visit the projects for a photo op, as it exposes how truly sheltered they are from the realities of that world.
God Does Like Ugly is a master work from a rapper on top of his game, alongside titans like Vince Staples, Malice, Pusha T, Ty Dolla $ign, and Westside Gunn, among others. It’s an evocative take on the trials and tribulations faced by Southern Black men and the perils that hide in every corner of such an upbringing—not just from gang violence, but the dominant American culture. One particular line on “Gz” poignantly speaks truth to this current situation: maybe Martin was wrong and Malcolm was right.
