WICK

the take

Other than his breakout song "Who Want Smoke??" (which is still a banger, no lie), I never really gave Nardo Wick a listen. I don't really have any reason why, but maybe it's because he makes pretty much the same cookie-cutter trap music that has been diluted for AGES at this point. Fast forward to recently and I discovered he released an album in 2025. My initial thoughts were: "Ohhh shoot! Nardo Wick dropped? I kinda wanna give this a listen. It might be decent." That wasn't the case. Remember how I said that Nardo Wick makes that cookie-cutter trap music? Yeah, that applies to his latest effort, "WICK". This album was really a bore to get through as a whole. Nardo Wick's flow today is STILL THE SAME AS IT WAS BACK IN 2021. In any other scenario, I probably wouldn't consider that as something truly detrimental to the musical end result, but when Nardo sounds uninteresting and his verses very well being "copy-and-paste"-like, it drags the album down a lot for me. Plus it doesn't really help that the production on here is pretty generic and basic in terms of its sound. And while I do kind of respect Nardo Wick for trying to be introspective at times ("Drew"), it's unfortunate that that falls flat for me, either due to the lyrical delivery or the production backing said introspection (it's usually the latter). The only bright spots on here belong to both 21 Savage and Future. While those two didn't exactly save their respective songs too much, they both provided something refreshing on a rather monotone album. I want to like Nardo Wick's music. Maybe I need to play his debut album and see how that sounds because "WICK" isn't really it for me.