Album Review: Glockaveli by Key Glock
Glockaveli, like every Glock project, stands at trap’s spear-tip by being perfectly happy as trap. If that feels like a small ambition, maybe you never really loved the genre in the first place.
Key Glock is one of the best trap rappers of this decade. After the death of his label boss Young Dolph, the mantle of Memphis rap naturally passed to him, and with a flawless run of Southern tapes, he has filled the vacancy as well as anyone could have.
Yet Key Glock is the rare great rapper who gives critics almost nothing to debate. Even when he turns a 2Pac homage on Glockaveli into a coming-of-age journal over soul beats, the tape glides by so seamlessly that all you can do is nod your head and admit it whips.
It really does whip. Key Glock makes trap music look ridiculously easy. He skips the missteps that leave other artists’ extra-long projects dull or monotonous. His beat selection is untouchable—on Gunna’s level—his flows are butter-smooth, his Memphis drawl is a joy, and his clipped “yeah!” ad-lib is the best in the game. You barely notice that there are no guest verses anywhere.
Glockaveli arrives without his longtime producer Bandplay, the architect of bangers like “Dough” and “Cocky.” Bandplay’s style—swinging 808s, clinical drums, a grimy synth—fits Glock perfectly, but Glockoma 2 already hinted that he’d fallen for vintage gear, and Glockaveli doubles down: it stretches soul samples and classy orchestration across those rumbling 808s. Imagine a grown-man 21 Savage who never sacrificed rawness—an entire album of “Redrum,” front to back.
The opener nails that balance: “Hallelujah” actually samples Leonard Cohen’s chorus. Glock’s calm, centered flow lets the chopped trap drums cut through a noir glow without bruising the original’s sacred hush. “Blue Devil” strides into Southern-rap canon by flipping the same Willie Hutch sample Three 6 Mafia used for “Stay Fly”—probably the album’s best moment. And German listeners will smirk when they catch the Bobby Hebb “Sunny” loop—though, truth be told, it doesn’t reach Cro’s “Easy.”
The aggressive knock of “No Sweat” also jumps out. Glock’s records reveal, on second listen, a surprising amount of rhythmic space and stray pockets inside the classic trap template; the 808 here is laid out like a dream. Near the back half, “Cream Soda” drops Glock on an entirely different bass palette, and that clicks too.
Still, that’s the joke: he’s so committed to trap that it genuinely startled me to hear him skip the 808 on just one of eighteen cuts. If you crave boom-bap drums or judge music mainly by innovation and risk, this album won’t thrill you the way Tyler or Denzel projects do.
And yet, every Key Glock tape gifts me at least one track that goes into infernal rotation. The past lineup was “Dough,” “Bill Gates,” “2 for 1,” and “Presidential Rolex”; right now “Hallelujah” and “Blue Devil” are jockeying to keep that tradition alive. Glockaveli, like every Glock project, stands at trap’s spear-tip by being perfectly happy as trap. If that feels like a small ambition, maybe you never really loved the genre in the first place.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Blue Devil,” “Hallelujah,” “No Sweat”