Hip-hop heads tend to be a reactionary lot. Criticizing someone’s favorite rapper can lead to unwinnable arguments. That is going to make this a difficult pill to swallow for fans of Trippie Red.

There’s so much to pick apart on Trip at Knight. From the incredibly lazy production and instrumentals to the vapid and half-baked lyrics that plague this album from its opening moments. The overabundance of distorted synth and 8-bit melodies with heavy bass and trap snares wears thin and there’s little effort put into variety; making any significant distinction between beats as the album goes on.

Only toward the latter half of the album does any sonic experimentation take place, with the mild ambient synths finally taking a backseat to percussive leads. Even still, that amounts to three songs on this 17-track album. I want my time back.

The lyricism of Trippie Redd is easily the worst part here. He rambles incoherently from song to song with little distinct focus to be found. His metaphors are uninspired; many are ham-fisted references to television. It’s like reading a page out of “Ready Player One,” with Trippie name-dropping all the things he grew up watching, such as “Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” “Dragon Ball Z,” “Rick and Morty,” “Danny Phantom,” Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Transformers,” “iCarly” and “Phineas & Ferb.”Cool shows, but there’s no effort to create a clever bar using wordplay, scheming or punchlines.

Opener “Molly Hearts” is an ode to MDMA. Trippie raps about crushing up and dissolving the drug while making it explicitly clear he isn’t drugging the women around him. He takes a shot at Rick Ross, who infamously rapped about doing that. “MP5” has a late 2000s or early 2010s vibe, sounding like something The Black Eyed Peas would’ve rapped over back in the day. Trippie Redd delivers some terrible bars like, “Yeah, you — squared, divide ’em by pi.” Math. In the first of many moments, he’s outperformed by the featured artist (this time by SoFaygo).

“Finish Line” finds Trippie infatuated with a woman who sleeps with him despite her general disinterest. It’s inoffensive but bland with euphemisms and contradictory messaging. “You hit the bitch one time, then you in love/ I had to hit the bitch one time, then I be done/ Shawty looked me in the eyes and sucked the end of my gun/ That moment forward, I knew she was the one,” he raps. On “Holy Smokes,” he and Lil Uzi Vert brag about their wealth and influence. At first it seems to be a song about how unfulfilled they feel regardless of that wealth and status, but it quickly devolves into standard flex affair.

“Super Cell” is nearly three minutes of Trippie Redd claiming he’s like every character from anime “Dragon Ball.” It reminded me of Open Mike Eagle‘s fantastic work on Anime, Trauma and Divorce, but this song is a polar opposite of Eagle’s “I’m a JoeStar”—lacking any humor, wit and complexity. Trippie flexes his street-cred on “Miss The Rage” and “Demon Time,” once again being outshined by fellow rappers Playboi Carti and Ski Mask the Slump God. Ski Mask takes Trippie’s edgy pop-culture-focused style and knocks it out of the park.

“Matt Hardy 999” features the late Juice WRLD. The two rap about robbing people and making bank. Juice’s verses carry the weight, with Trippie along for the ride. “Vibe” pads out the tracklist with a single verse and two hooks as Trippie raps about his wealth and sleeping around. Somehow, this song isn’t even the most phoned in on the album. “New Money” sees Trippie return to his emo rap roots as he whines about a desire to be left alone by women—while at the same time demanding their attention when he wants it.

The most offending, laziest and most exploitative track is “Danny Phantom.” There’s an argument to be had about using vocals from dead rappers as features, particularly when the rapper making the album was a friend. It could be  an effective tribute, but it could also be seen as a cash grab. This is a cash grab. “Danny Phantom” is a remake of Trippie Redd’s “Ghost Busters,” but features friend XXXTentacion. Trippie Redd performs a lazy repetitive hook (the same as the original song), and slaps what’s easily one of the worst XXX verses on top of it.

The album is well beyond the point of no return by this point, but “Space Time,” “Baki” and “iPhone” perpetuate the same shallow and creatively bankrupt ideas. Not even stellar performances from Polo G and Lil Durk on “Rich MF” could offer any sort of saving grace.

The original version of this story misspelled the name of Playboi Carti. We regret the error.

Follow editor Tim Hoffman at Twitter.com/hipsterp0tamus.