Album Review: e.t.d.s. A Mixtape by .idk. by IDK
A fifteen-year sentence became three, and now IDK spends fifteen tracks calculating what he owes and who he’ll never pay back. He has the detail of a witness and the conscience of a getaway driver.
Survival language has a shelf life. You learn to speak a certain way when your environment punishes softness—when asking for help reads as weakness, when explanation sounds like excuse, when every conversation might be recorded and monitored. That last part isn’t metaphor. The tape opens with a collect call from a Maryland correctional facility, the automated voice announcing the surveillance before the first bar drops. The whole project (aptly titled Even the Devil Smiles) operates under that logic—testimony, evidence, the constant calculation of what can be held against you.
IDK caught a fifteen-year sentence at seventeen and did three. The outro on “HALO” does the math plainly: “If I did the whole time, I’d be out in 2025.” That ghost schedule haunts the project, every brag measured against the version of himself who never got to make one, every flex a rebuttal to a cell he can still feel. The proving runs deep. “I’m a crook with a deal,” he announces early. “If my record don’t sell, I’ma rob and steal.” The if-then construction tells you everything—success is parole, failure is reversion, and the pacing keeps one foot in both worlds just in case.
The robbery material is where the writing gets sharpest. On “SCARY MERRi,” IDK walks through his teenage lick routine with the precision of someone who still remembers the floor plan: kick in the door, pass the china in the living room, find the master bed, locate the safe, grab the stash. The Conductor Williams beat staggers like a drunk stumbling home from a bad decision, and the lyrics match—he walked a man down from the 7-Eleven at seventeen, walked into Zara with a bookbag and walked out with merchandise, and took an iPhone from a woman leaving a train. The detail that sticks is the stepfather’s wallet: “Left enough, so if they ask how much he lost, he couldn’t call it.” That’s the precision of harm calibrated to avoid detection, a kid who learned to steal in increments that don’t register as theft.
The song ends with him going to jail on Christmas night for a murder he didn’t commit—all that dirt, and the bid comes from something he didn’t do.
“FLAKKA” goes deeper into the cell with a fifteen-year sentence at seventeen, Aryans down the block, and 500K he couldn’t make for bail. He cops Flakka to pass time, tries K2 on his birthday, smokes it slow to make the high last while parole turns abstract. The MF DOOM collaboration carries a line that sums up the whole carceral theology: “The Bible is a homemade shank in either hand.” Faith as weapon, scripture as survival tool, iron sharpening iron in a place designed to dull you. When he lands back in county a second time, the observation cuts: “Same niggas from last time is still tryna pass time.” The system diaphragms and the faces stay the same, where the only thing that changes is which side of the door you’re standing on.
Black Thought shows up on “P.O” and immediately outclasses the host, which is what Black Thought does. His verse runs through the distinction between rock and gem, boys and men, pistol and pen, and you can hear the craft gap in real time. IDK holds his own on the track, but the Philly legend’s presence highlights what the younger rapper is still reaching toward—the ability to make street knowledge sound like philosophy without losing the street. Pusha T lands on “LiFE 4 A LiFE” with a verse about refusing to crash out on podcasts, watching other rappers give their whole past away for content. “I can’t even podcast, givin’ all my past out/Watchin’ niggas crash out, tellin’ who they ask ‘bout.” It’s a warning IDK might’ve heard too late, given how much of his own origin story he’s scattered across this tape. The DMX collaboration is historic by circumstance (the first posthumous X feature approved by the estate), but the song itself runs on inertia, with both rappers trading threats without the combustion their earlier work achieved.
The authenticity obsession runs through everything. “EVERYONE KNOWS :)” circles the word “fake” like a drain, IDK raps about snakes in the grass, enemies in disguise, the impossibility of trust. The paranoia makes sense for someone who learned young that partners might tell, that loyalty has a price, that the only safe lick is a solo lick. But the fake-spotting starts to sound like its own kind of performance after a while, the guy who can’t stop proving he’s real because he’s not sure what real buys him anymore.
A wise man once said, “Your favorite rapper sex lines be soundin’ weird these days,” and that talk stays troubled throughout. On “CLOVER,” a woman’s depression becomes an opportunity: “And when she get depressed, treat my dick like Zoloft.” On “CELL BLOCK FREESTYLE,” he calls himself a boomerang—“I might call you my boo today, but when tomorrow come, I’m finna get your ass an Uber, bae.” The title “MiSOGYNISTICAL” announces its subject and then delivers exactly what it promises without complication. A woman visited him in prison, brought a friend, dumped him for being born again. Years later, he tracked her down on Instagram, slept with her, and left. “Fucked her so good, she turned Buddhist.” The revenge is the punchline, and the song just presents the transaction as settled.
What saves the project from being a ledger of scores and grievances is the closer. “SCRAMBLED EGGS - TBC :(” drops the posture. “I still feel regret from the people I robbed/My heart still hurt from the people I’ve harmed/I still can’t sleep from the pain that I’ve dealt.” The writing turns toward something that sounds like actual reckoning, not another flex disguised as confession. The title gets its explanation: “Even the devil smiles/Even the earth cries/Evidence that all human characteristics were meant to live side by side.” The name gets its origin story: “The answer’s always been IDK/A name I created while the uncertainty that imprisons me/While behind bars helped me say/‘I’ll be forever okay.’” The artist name doubles as survival mechanism, the persona as coping strategy, the bravado as armor against a system that wanted him gone for fifteen years.
The problem is that one song of genuine reckoning doesn’t balance a tape full of score-settling. IDK has the pen, the detail, the institutional memory of someone who survived what should have swallowed him. What he doesn’t have yet is the willingness to let the vulnerability run longer than one track, because the confession keeps turning back into a flex and the regret keeps finding an exit into brag. The writing is sharp enough to know what it’s doing, which makes the evasions harder to excuse.
IDK can detail the harm throughout, as he can walk you through the stepfather’s wallet, the 7-Eleven walkdown, the Christmas Eve arrest for a body he didn’t catch, tell you what K2 tastes like on your birthday in a cell, and quote the automated voice that announces your calls are being recorded. What he can’t do yet, for more than one song at a time, is admit something without immediately turning it into proof he’s real. The tape concludes on “To be continued,” and he’s still in the doorway, still calculating what he can admit and what he can keep.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “SCARY MERRi,” “FLAKKA,” “SCRAMBLED EGGS - TBC :(”