There’s something melancholy and hopeful about the sentiment, that despite all his struggles, he knows it can’t go with him, but still he strives. He promises that he’d give away all material possessions to make it heaven and see his grandmother again. His raps are buttressed by supporting musicians such as the indelible Robert Glasper (on the expansive “The Light”) as he contemplates his “Higher Calling” and tries to “Keep The Devil Off.” The standout though, as with many of his past projects, is the album closer “Bury Me In Gold.” KRIT croons “bury me in gold / just in case the old man doesn’t know me and claims that I owe,” in his bluesy baritone, ruminating on life after death and what is left behind after the mortal coil expires. This half is the “Big KRIT rapping about his car and making strip club anthems” half of the double project, which should more than satisfy fans of his “Country Sh*t” and “I Got This Here” type tracks. The aforementioned “Big Bank” is classic KRIT with its hyperactive, Three 6 Mafia-inspired beat and boisterous swagger and fits cozily into the “Big KRIT” half of the album where all the more “obvious” rap lives. While the conceit of a split personality album has been used in the past, notably on “Big Bank” collaborator T.I.’s TI vs TIP project, here the execution makes perfect sense. And while criticisms of his projects’ length haven’t convinced KRIT to contribute fewer songs to 4eva, by reframing it as a double album, it allows the project to split into less daunting, more digestible chunks that still tell the complete story of each half. “Ride With Me” even features UGK, the group he’s most been compared to, perhaps as a way to distinguish him from Pimp C and demonstrate he can stand alongside the all-time greats - he does, by the way. Almost every successful artist has a distinctive sonic identity that singles out their production as solely their own, so why should KRIT be any different? It’s an old joke that “Big KRIT songs all sound alike,” but there’s something to be said for consistency. Every component of his prior musical compositions is there: The booming 808s, the gloriously-chopped soul samples, and the rapid-fire rhymes that tackle and deconstruct every subject from strip clubs to Sunday sermons all serve to paint the same, colorful Southern imagery KRIT has become renowned and even ridiculed for. This is most definitely a Big KRIT album sonically. But 4eva Is A Mighty Long Time might be the turning point that takes him from underappreciated critical favorite to a true king, cementing his legacy as one of the greats of this generation, and part of how it accomplishes that is by allowing those two halves of KRIT to coexist. Despite the tremendous reception of his soul-drenched, bass-heavy sound, with two underperforming albums at Def Jam and a plethora of misinformed social media jokes about the monotony of his sound, it seemed that, cruelly, his ultimate destiny was to fade away, the man known as Justin Scott becoming little more than an internet meme parody of Big KRIT, the performer. He began to script his own legacy from the very first major release, titled KRIT Was Here, telling us his goal right from the beginning. Even down to his chosen pseudonym: King Remembered In Time. So many of his albums - official retail releases and otherwise - revolve around the idea of legacy.
Big KRIT is obsessed with the concept of “forever.”
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