Houston-born singer and rapper Don Toliver continues his relentless run since his breakout album in 2020, releasing four albums in four years and now arriving at his fifth, OCTANE. In an interview with GQ, Toliver shared how his love for cars and driving drove the album’s production, much like his 2024 album HARDSTONE PSYCHO and its thematic focus on motorcycles. Across 18 tracks, the album carries a constant theme, portraying women and cars as parallel obsessions.
Toliver’s career is built on melodic trap and syrupy vocals, never without a beat and auto-tuned crooning. In OCTANE, this formula remains intact, even when its effect grows weary. Tasteful descriptions and comparisons are non-existent, with lyrics like those in “All the Signs” encapsulating the album’s surface-level similes that substitute for lyrical creativity.
“Pushin’ that pussy all in my face, I wanna grab it / You’re like my favorite car, I wanna gas it,” Toliver sings.
Another exhausting element is the album’s near-total lack of sonic distinction, with “Tiramisu” serving as a clear example. Marketed as the album’s lead single, the track should expectedly stand out from the album, yet it melts seamlessly into the songs before and after, all sharing the same hazy synths and glossy trap beat structure. Any attempt at memorability collapses under its own familiarity, making it difficult to identify where one song ends and another begins.
The album’s strongest moments are its samples and features, perhaps due to the fact that it breaks up the repetition and tedious listening of the rest of the album. The opener, “E85,” samples Malcom Todd’s “Chest Pain (I Love),” layering soft strings over a pulsing beat and setting expectations the rest of the album struggles to meet. Features from Yeat and Teezo Touchdown provide some of the album’s few moments of fresh energy.
On “Rendezvous,” Yeat’s chorus pairs exceedingly well with Toliver’s melody, crafting one of the album’s more dynamic tracks. “Secondhand,” featuring Rema, switches into an Afrobeats groove and differs by being slightly more emotive than the rest of the tracklist. A love song focused on yearning rather than conquest, Toliver’s “vulnerability,” showcased by his desire for a girl to stay, sets an incredibly low bar for emotional depth.
The rest of the album continues to recycle its fixation on women. “Tuition,” Toliver sings about a woman who has to strip to pay for college, but refuses to dig beneath the premise, choosing to focus on how “The booty get jiggly like Jell-O.” In “Call Back,” Toliver interrupts his incessant fixation to let you know he bought a new car — a Rubicon Jeep to be exact.
“I’m lovin’ that ass, I’m rubbin’ your feet (Woo) / I bought a new truck, a Rubicon Jeep / I paid all cash, the shit’s not cheap.”
From track to track, OCTANE impresses as a collection of polished beats, but that polish costs the album’s personality. In isolation, some tracks could easily be added to a late-night playlist, but the album’s monotony makes it difficult to remember which ones deserve to be there.
2 cars out of 5
