NAV released his second studio album “Bad Habits” through The Weeknd’s XO label. I could stop the article here because the album is so mundane that there’s nothing that could change anyone’s mind about the artist. If someone enjoys the monotony of every other NAV project, they will enjoy this. I, for one, did not.

My initial reaction to this album was that if NAV’s entire discography was played on shuffle, there would be no discerning which song is from which project. He has not grown or progressed as an artist and his projects continue to suffer. He could put all of his best work from each album and mixtape into probably four songs each; it wouldn’t be too hard －he uses almost the same flow and style in every one of his songs, so they’re already interchangeable.

NAV is at his best in small doses, typically as a feature, and even then he is rarely (if ever) the best part of a song. While his skill at producing music is admittedly admirable, his vocal contributions aren’t anything special. It may be best for him to stay on the other side of the studio glass.

His experience as a producer gave me hope that at least the instrumentals would be interesting and entertaining despite his barely-tolerable vocals, however behind his dull rapping are uninteresting beats that compliment his prosaic style. It seems as though there is nothing NAV brings to the table that his contemporaries couldn’t do exponentially better.

The feature verses are the highlights of this album, as is typical with NAV. Meek Mill delivers a great verse on “Tap” only for the song to return to NAV’s monotony. The Weeknd brings a sub-par feature (for The Weeknd) and yet his contribution—in which he can’t seem to decide what pitch to sing in—is welcomed just to break up the never-ending flatness of NAV.

The deluxe version of the album adds eight more songs including a typical, charismatic Future verse. Other than that, the deluxe version may as well be a desperate reach for more streaming minutes. I can’t imagine why anyone would want another 20 minutes of NAV when they could jump to NAV’s popular tracks and hear everything they would ever want to hear from him then be done with him as an artist.

Overall, one of the hardest parts about reviewing this album is staying awake through the project. There is so little that grabs my interest the album can hardly be used as background music. It makes NAV even more dislikeable when he says lines like “what’s game without me?” He could be replaced with white noise and we could hardly tell the difference.

Overall, this album was as “meh” as an album can possibly be. It was not painful to my ears, however, it was by no means pleasant. I was tired of it about three songs in and it didn’t improve with time. I doubt I will replay anything from the album after this review.

Rating: 1/5 Stars

Mitchell Kret can be reached at [email protected] or @mkret222 on Twitter.