It’s Been Awful is Isaiah Rashad’s third studio album for Top Dawg Entertainment, released in 2026 after another of the long, uneasy gaps that have become part of his artistic signature. Across 16 tracks and about 54 minutes, he leans further into the moody, slow‑burning sound he’s cultivated since Cilvia Demo and The Sun’s Tirade: syrupy Southern beats, hazy guitar and key layers, and his half‑sung, half‑rapped delivery that drifts between weary muttering and sudden emotional crackle. Songs like The New Sublime, M.O.M., Same Shit, GTKY, Boy In Red (with SZA), Act Normal, Happy Hour, Do I Look High, Nuthin 2 Hide, Supaficial, Ain’t Givin’ Up, Superpwrs, and 719 Freestyle form what several reviewers call a “relapse diary,” with Rashad naming pills, cocaine, whiskey, and the people he’s hurt in brutal detail rather than offering a neat redemption arc.Lyrically, the album is intensely introspective and vulnerable, focused on addiction, relapse, depression, family strain, and the complicated aftermath of the public outing and online harassment he faced after a leaked video in 2022. While he cites OutKast, Goodie Mob, and Organized Noize as influences, critics note that It’s Been Awful is less overtly “Southern fried” than that reference implies; instead it feels like “pure summer afternoon porch music” with darkness circling the edges—warm, inviting production carrying verses full of self‑doubt and self‑reproach. Tracks such as GTKY and Happy Hour offer some of his most immediately catchy hooks to date, yet that sweetness is undercut by wounded fear in the verses, and pieces like Do I Look High and Ain’t Givin’ Up form a devastating pair: the first about wanting to kick drugs, the second admitting he’s not ready to let go of the high even as it wrecks him. Features are sparse (SZA on Boy In Red, Dominic Fike on Cameras), keeping the focus squarely on Rashad’s voice and the “constellation of sounds” that trace his transformative years; many listeners describe the album as his rawest statement so far, a difficult but deeply human record about still trying to get by when, as the title says, it’s been awful and may continue to be.
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