Oh, man... Hi, everyone. Nthony Ftano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new NF EP, FEAR.

NF, if you're unaware, is a Michigan native, a rapper, songwriter, singer, producer who had a pretty strong and impressive commercial run in the 2010s. Maybe it's one that wasn't taken particularly seriously by ultra-gatekeeping rap snobs. Nonetheless, he and his music reached a peak of popularity that was pretty much impossible to ignore, especially among rap fans who tastes might skew a little bit more toward artists like Eminem and prefer their bars and verses to be super melodramatic —maybe a bit Christian-coded — and filtered through these typical types of very aggressive, technical, lyrical-miracle flows.

Off of this, he's reached a status where, across the internet, while his music is very broadly and vocally hated, there's clearly a silent majority of fans who are getting a lot out of what he does and are making sure each one of his projects do big numbers.

For example, it was pretty widely reported that this EP here had, I guess, the most saves of any rap artist or rap project on Spotify due to there just being a lot of anticipation for it, which I was surprised about. It's been a few years since NF released his last full-length LP, HOPE, which wasn't quite as commercially successful as its predecessor out of the gate, but it only missed the number one spot by a hair due to Morgan Wallen pretty much dropping around the same week. This record, in a way, too, also saw NF gaining a bit more credibility in some hip-hop circles with features from the likes of Cordae. One would think after a string of so many successful albums in recent years (and a mixtape, too), that NF would just continue to strike while the iron is hot.

But he's now very unceremoniously returning two years later with just an EP. And while this project might be leading towards something bigger coming in 2026, NF certainly wouldn't be the first artist to tease towards something full-length in this way.

FEAR presents a pretty big change of pace that I have to wonder: will his fans take to him going in a new direction? While it is true NF's music typically runs pretty sentimental and occasionally corny, I didn't expect to be hit by one of the most sickeningly sweet nods to Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" right out of the gate. Then from there, NF proceeds to go into this highly Twenty One Pilots-coded, acoustic pop cut where he's trying to sell himself on this laid back, singer-songwriter angle. When in reality, he's just making streaming friendly reductive slop.

Again, to go back to that Twenty One Pilots vibe and influence, it's like he's trying to bring that energy but without any of the quirk or world-building that typically makes Twenty One Pilots appealing. Or in numerical terms, it's like he's operating with about six or seven pilots.

That style does not stop here. It's not just a novel thing he's trying out on the opening track. It continues again on the following, "HOME", which is a song that I can give some points for its much more personal and devastating lyricism. I certainly sympathize with the experiences he's speaking to on this track, but it doesn't make his attempts at jumping into an acoustic pop songwriter lane here any less vomit-inducing. Even as someone who's not even an NF fan, I was disappointed to hear mgk being the first person to actually rap on this project. As on the song "WHO I WAS", NF once more spends his time singing and being overly sentimental, while mgk is actually focused on the bars and flows and genuinely doing a better job of speaking to painful experiences and losing friends in a way that has conviction to it.

Eventually, NF does start to rap on this record, but by the time he does, the lyrics and energy are so woe-is-me and annoying, it's tough to listen to. The song "GIVE ME A REASON" is just this endless, obnoxious diatribe about how he's seeking for people to basically question his artistry and motives, call his music trash, and basically put him down in any way he can possibly think of. It's enough to really make you think about his motivations for getting into music in the first place, or at least how his motivations may have changed over the course of his career. This, on some level, he does acknowledge on this song. This track also feels almost like a premeditated response to the likely callouts he's going to receive over a project like this because long-time fans are obviously going to question him and say, "Hey, man, why aren't you rapping? Why are you selling out or switching up?"

Doing a song like this almost feels like beating some of those naysayers to the punch. But as self-aware as NF tries to come across on this track, at the end of the day, the song really just feels like it's people saying negative things about him that have been motivating him the most. Now that his commercial and industry success has more or less been solidified, and people have more or less just accepted that he's here to stay, maybe he's not seeing quite as much fanfare or pushback as he used to. Which, if you're an artist who just cares about creating for art's sake, that's not really something you should be too infatuated with.

The following track, "SORRY", sees NF trying to further dive into this acoustic switch-up once again with a song that just sounds like a goddamn Ed Sheeran knockoff. It just goes to show that his taste in singer-songwriter music is as boring and as surface level as his taste in rap. Because, if he actually dove into the genres in a deep way, you would think the results he would come out with from the studio would be a bit more interesting or specific to him. But no, once again, he just sounds like the two or three most mainstream and accessible artists that he happens to listen to in these styles.

Now, NF actually does start rapping again on the closing track to this EP "WASHED UP", and the levels of annoying that he hits on this track is maybe doubled or tripled from "GIVE ME A REASON". On this song, he actually does start complaining and letting negative thoughts seep in regarding the state of his career, which is a very odd state to see him in considering the incredibly successful commercial run that he's been on over the past decade or so.

It's concerning because it all feels a little forced on some level. Like, is NF rapping this way because he genuinely sees his career and his creative mind as being in a state of shambles right now? Or is he having to come up with ghosts to battle on this project because being that underdog — being that guy who has a big obstacle in front of him that he needs to overcome in a really epic and righteous and self-fulfilling way — that's been NF's thing for a long time. Now that he's at a peak in his career, I imagine those challenges he once faced are not quite so many. Rather than enjoying that creative freedom and giving his fans what they so desire, he's instead throwing a temper tantrum because he doesn't know what the fuck to do.

While I understand to some degree everyone is entitled to their own truth and own reality, the singing, the writing, the rapping, and the production are nowhere near good enough to where I would even begin to think about humoring NF's delusions here, which is why I'm feeling a light 1 on this EP.

Anthony Fantano. NF. Forever.