Some version of half of the songs on YNW Melly’s Just a Matter of Slime was available to stream before the album’s actual release, a strategy clearly in service of keeping the incarcerated star’s name in the streets. Despite the very heinous accusations of orchestrating the 2018 murders of friends and crew members YNW Juvy and YNW Sakchaser, Melly remains as popular as ever, especially within industry circles, this particular project boasting collaborations with Lil Uzi Vert (“Mind of Melvin”), Lil Baby and Lil Durk (“Take Kare”) and Kodak Black (“Thugged Out”), among others. These collabs, likely ideated while Melly was free and reportedly finished with the MC’s input via jail phone call, sound nothing if not organic, Melly’s froggy warble serving as a remarkably dependable bridge between voices both hard (Kevin Gates, Hotboii) and soft (Queen Naija, Lil Tjay). Melly, here, is as much “the menace” as he’s ever claimed to be, something that can strike a nerve in a particularly unsettling manner when you hear him say things like “I’m a real n***a, I can kill who I want to” on “Loving My Life”.