At this point, he simply has trouble matching 2 Chainz’s outlandishness bar-for-bar. For every "I’m so high the blunt feel like a dumbbell/ These niggas tiny like a spider on a Spud Webb," Wayne provides, 2 Chainz delivers five delirious winners like "I had a sitdown with Farrakhan/ Turned the White House to the Terrordome." This unbalance becomes an issue on songs like "Rolls Royce Weather Every Day" and "Bentley Truck," where Wayne sputters so much that you wish this was just a 2 Chainz album. Six tracks are 2 Chainz-only, including two highlights-"MFN Right" and "Not Invited"-which originally appeared on his recent EP, Felt Like Cappin, where they benefitted from the shorter running time without Wayne verses, they feel out of place here. It’s also odd that one of that EP’s standouts, "Back on My Bullshyt," which features of the better Lil Wayne verses in recent memory, didn’t make it to ColleGrove. "MFN Right" and "Not Invited" also standout as the sonic outliers here, one minimalist, the other soulful. Everything else lies along a gradient of glazed synths that mushroom, percolate, or oscillate, allowing just enough room to accommodate both Wayne’s whine and 2 Chainz’s groggy drawl. The production credits are a road map of the pair’s collective journey, from one-time in-house Cash Money producer Mannie Fresh, to modern trap architects Mike WiLL Made It, Southside, and Zaytoven, to rap’s current all stars Metro Boomin, TM88, and FKi. Their collective effort doesn’t quite live up to their pedigree, but it’s still formidable. That is, excepting the Mannie Fresh-produced "Gotta Lotta," with its unnecessarily dense layering and nursery rhyme hook. There are moments where everything goes right, like on the well-paced "Bounce" or the London on da Track-produced VIP checklist "Section," and you can see how the album may have worked in theory. These rappers have an undeniable chemistry, and when they both find their best, the album is pure fun. But more often than not, ColleGrove plays out like 2 Chainz pulling his friend and mentor up by his bootstraps while ceding a bit of the spotlight in the process. It’s a generous gesture, but a costly one.Relationships have always been a big part of Wayne's success. He came into the rap game in a group and never lost his willingness to collaborate. Features were done in bulk, he has more artists signed to him than the New Orleans Saints have players, and rappers orbit him like the Earth does the sun.