Fivio, once a spongelike apprentice to Pop Smoke despite his seniority, has veered occasionally toward cautionary tale. In the two and a half years since he scored a seven-figure deal with a major label, the man born Maxie Ryles III of East Flatbush has endured the murders of two close friends and collaborators, and been arrested twice, delaying his own musical development.
Yet through some combination of persistence and circumstance — including a stylistic breakthrough he came to behind bars — Fivio has also become perhaps drill’s biggest and best hope to settle into something less uncertain. “My role is to not let the drill die out,” he said. “Just like it’s feeding me, it’s feeding other people, too.”
On “B.I.B.L.E.,” the rapper tries to maneuver an unconventional sound onto a more conventional path: smoothing down drill’s street edge into something safely marketable.
Melodic and radio-ready, the album relies, like many major-label rap debuts before it, on singing guests (Kaycyy, Vory, Lil Tjay) and especially the voices of women (Keys, Queen Naija, Chloe Bailey) in a bid for more mass appeal. In line with drill’s evolutionary lurch toward musical familiarity, known as “sample drill,” there are also big-budget, pop-oriented tastes of Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name,” Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” and Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” throughout.
Gun and gang talk, metaphorical or otherwise, is purposefully sublimated, though it’s in there, too (see: “Slime Them,” a pure growl, or “Left Side,” which nods more understatedly to Fivio’s long flouted Crip affiliation). But overall, Fivio said with a politician’s on-message discipline, he is hoping to divorce drill’s distinct musical quirks from its expected subject matter.