At risk of the lamest joke possible, Isaiah Rashad returns as some kind of anti-Gandalf: “I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide.” His lengthy absences between projects have become a near signature. His last, The House is Burning, arrived months after the end of a Trump presidency, and its followup shows its face during another one. Yeah, It’s Been Awful.
While the album no doubt bears the weariness inherent in this period, as is customary, Rashad is more concerned with the personal than society at large. Which is, wise, really, because there’s simply no accounting for the present, and, as his best insular statements always do, his personal reality comes to embody universal woe and perseverance.
While he claimed OutKast, Goodie Mob, and Organized Noize as primary influences on It’s Been Awful, the album is perhaps less Southern fried than you might have imagined from such a tease. It is, however, decidedly warm and inviting, pure summer afternoon porch music, in spite of the push and pull between the darkness lurking at the edges of every Isaiah Rashad vision.
Indeed, It’s Been Awful boasts some of Rashad’s most immediately gripping and memorable hooks to date. Just try to get “GTKY” out of your head, or “Boy in Red” alongside longtime compatriot SZA. Even “Same Shit”, with its more overtly ominous, threatening nature is propelled by an instantly recognizable listing of realities as a chorus.
Yet, all of these wonderfully gilded moments don’t conceal the struggle right behind them. Take “GTKY” once more, whose earnest, lovelorn sweetness is often offset by a wounded fear in the verses. Rashad stands, seethes, wonders (and wanders), alone.
To that end, Rashad is particularly avoidant of features across It’s Been Awful. On the one hand, given his singular nature, it’s beneficial to allow the album to nearly entirely rely on his own strengths. On the other, it might have been nice to hear another great Southern voice or two to glide across these beats the way, say, Duke Deuce careened through “Lay wit Ya” on the last record.
Bafflingly, however, given his usual penchant for cohesive sound and tasteful curation, Zay does tap Dominic Fike for “Cameras”. Fike’s beige, vacuous crooning sounds more at home on features for the likes of Justin Bieber and Jennie, whereas here it sticks out as ugly, generic pop smatter and nearly grinds the album to a halt with his soulless posturing. Then again, given Rashad named OutKast as a major influence here, perhaps he was just trying to match Antwan in the ‘What? Why?’ department for throwing Vonnegutt on Sir Lucious Left Foot.
Especially for those that take their time between projects, but even generally, we tend to expect “big” gestures from our artists: there’s a reason the term “eras” has become ever more prominent; it was coming with or without Taylor Swift’s ego. The listener is looking for it from the artists they follow: progress! Dramatic regression! Reveling in the hedonism of a moment! At the very least, something.
So, then, it takes another type of boldness altogether for Rashad to craft painstaking art out of simply managing to get by. The world of It’s Been Awful doesn’t truly feel all that removed from the one of The House is Burning, and that seems to be the entire point. Following his absence and struggles with addiction following The Sun’s Tirade, he was finding his footing, his sanity, and what’s left to find of happiness as we age in this present, draining reality. Here, in 2026, you know what? He’s still finding it. His willingness to bear that battle is both worrying and encouraging. If he hasn’t come out the other side, will we?
Yet, the fact that he’s still trying – still finds it worth trying – while finding moments of joy and beauty betwixt the exhausting pursuit is as meaningful, if not more so, than any overly arranged presentation of newfound wisdom and grace. It’s Been Awful, and it still is, and it’s likely going to be for quite some time, but Isaiah Rashad is getting by. He persists, and so do we.
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