Though 21 takes time to celebrate his rise from long trips on MARTA to Rolls-Royce roadhead, and his refusal to wear any watch that cost less than $100,000, Savage Mode II is rooted in the same grim source material as SM1. Morgan Freeman’s over-the-top cinematic narration is not a one-off gimmick, but the connective tissue of the project. With Savage Mode II, 21 and Metro have created a near-perfect sequel that revisits the moods of its predecessor while simultaneously carving out its own distinctive identity as tribute to the music they grew up on. 'Silence of the Lambs': The Complete Buffalo Bill Story For all of his triumphs, he never released anything as visionary and boldly atmospheric as Savage Mode.
Before he abruptly “retired” in 2018, Metro had ascended to the top of his profession by stripping down the maximalism of Lex Luger and using mainstream Atlanta trap as a laboratory for his studies in texture.
These beats gave a new context for 21’s rare croak, slasher villain nihilism, and bleak personal history. Metro’s production-stark, surreal, and often serene-had macabre orchestral sensibilities, with quivering flutes and synths made to sound like cursed woodwinds. I still think of this beautiful, desolate painting every time I listen to 21 Savage and Metro Boomin’s 2016 Savage Mode, arguably the greatest collaborative rapper-producer project of the last decade. Death lingers, but not its fresh stench, only the sense of its infinitude. Beyond the abbey, a grove of bald, gnarled oak trees basks in the dim sunlight. In the 1810 Caspar David Friedrich painting “Abbey in the Oakwood,” a group of monks carries a coffin through the snow into the crumbling ruins of a gothic abbey.