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Isaiah Rashad does not hide behind metaphors on his latest album, It’s Been Awful. The title alone tells listeners exactly where his head has been. Honesty has always been central to Rashad’s music, from his breakthrough 2016 project The Sun’s Tirade to 2021’s The House Is Burning. Across his career, the Top Dawg Entertainment artist has carved out his own lane with hazy Southern rap, neo soul textures, and deeply personal songwriting that often goes far deeper emotionally than many of his peers.

Rashad’s previous album arrived after a difficult period involving homelessness and rehab, and this new record comes following another painful chapter in his life. Between relapses, fractured family relationships, and the invasion of privacy that followed the leak of a sex tape in 2022, It’s Been Awful feels like the sound of someone confronting everything at once. He wastes no time addressing it on opening track ‘The New Sublime’, where he raps, “Feel afflicted, falling over / Ask me who I’m fucking, I been fucking up.” The song dives into his fears around sobriety, his sister’s incarceration, and the emotional impact these struggles have on the people closest to him.

Themes of addiction and self destruction continue to run through the album. On ‘Same Sh!t’, a track carrying influences from A$AP Rocky and Skepta, Rashad references substance abuse directly with the line, “The pills, the blow, the ‘yac, the top,” while nodding to classic Lil Jon energy. ‘M.O.M’ captures the cycle of temptation and compromise as he tries to resist one vice only to replace it with another. Elsewhere, he speaks openly about the physical damage these habits have caused, admitting, “The doctor say that shit been fucking with my heart / but I can’t barely sleep / chasing money, love and all of the amphetamines.”

The emotional weight deepens on ‘Act Normal’, where Rashad examines generational trauma and learned behaviors passed through family lines, reflecting on “Acquired secrets / Learned to be the best at it.” Then on ‘Do I Look High?’, he strips away any remaining distance between himself and the listener with one of the album’s most vulnerable admissions: “Last time that I told you that I was clean, I was lying / I’m praying that my sister makes it home by Christmas morning.” The album’s brutally detailed storytelling may feel heavy for some listeners, but that raw specificity is exactly what gives the project its emotional power.

Still, It’s Been Awful is not consumed entirely by darkness. Rashad has spoken about music as something healing and transformative, and throughout the album he refuses to let despair completely swallow him. Inspired by artists like Prince and OutKast, the project carries a warm, sun faded atmosphere that softens the pain without hiding it. ‘Supaficial’ glides forward with bright trumpet accents while Rashad casually delivers lines like, “Where you going? You a junkie, you been way outside.” Meanwhile, ‘Happy Hour’ turns emotional exhaustion into something strangely melodic, pairing confessional lyrics with dreamy piano production. At its best, the album feels like Southern rap drifting through late night R&B haze during a summer drive with the windows down.

On ‘Superpwrs’, Rashad sums up the cycle he seems trapped inside, asking, “How I get sober, fucked up, then clean again, I don’t know,” before acknowledging his own disappearing acts from music with, “How you be rapping circles around n****s, but you don’t drop, I don’t know.” His skill has never been the issue. The real obstacle has always been life itself. But with It’s Been Awful, Isaiah Rashad delivers one of his most honest and affecting projects yet, making it impossible to overlook him any longer.