D.R.A.M. is an American rapper and singer, making music somewhere between R&B and trap-rap. If your immediate reaction is “Another one?”, I don’t blame you. D.R.A.M’s first full-length album arrives at a time when its genre is a double-edged sword. This year has shown that there are certainly listeners for bright R&B-influenced rap, which ought to be a good thing. But the fact that Drake, Chance the Rapper, Young Thug, Rae Sremmurd and literally hundreds of Soundcloud rappers have already dominated the hip hop world this year with this sound makes it increasingly difficult to stand out and create something new and interesting within the sub-genre. Luckily, Big Baby D.R.A.M. doesn’t even try to do this – it is unapologetically a ‘2016 rap’ album. There’s nothing terribly original or boundary-pushing here – the same kinds of beats, flows and features you could find on a dozen albums to come out this year. But what Big Baby lacks in originality, it makes up for in its consistent output of catchy hooks and plain un-intellectual fun.

Unlike some of its peers which seem to aim for emotional and intellectual depth and fall embarrassingly short, Big Baby D.R.A.M. is self-consciously simple. The lyrics won’t blow anyone away, and no radical new sounds are explored. But it’s honestly difficult to hear some of these songs and not smile. If there’s one part where the album stands out, it’s in D.R.A.M.’s vocal delivery and personality. Instead of a rapper who sometimes sings, he has a great and original voice even without autotune. Even when he raps, D.R.A.M. sounds like he’s constantly performing with a grin (this might well be true – try to find a single picture of him not smiling). Both the lead vocals and harmonies he provides sound great, and their sincerity makes the album surprisingly touching, considering the simplistic lyrical content.

The tracks here are roughly divided into two types: the playful club-rap bangers like those that brought D.R.A.M. visibility before the album’s release, and saccharine R&B love songs. The deceptively simple ‘Broccoli’ with Lil Yachty is based around a few looped piano chords and a trap beat, but still manages to sound fresh and fun listen after listen. ‘Misunderstood’ is set to a dark cinematic beat, and features a show stealing feature from Young Thug, which might be my favourite guest-verse of his in a year where he’s had seemingly hundreds.

When the album changes gears toward slower R&B ballads near the middle, clear standouts are ‘WiFi’ and ‘100%’. ‘WiFi’ features D.R.A.M. delivering a duet with Erykah Badu, converging on a beautiful hook with both singers’ voices complimenting each other perfectly. ‘100%’ is a simple and honest love song and refreshingly isn’t built around recounting sexual conquests like most other love songs here. In its lyrical simplicity (“A simple hey from you / Holds more rank than a love letter from any super star”) and soft jazzy beat, it is the emotional high point of the album.

Thematically the album isn’t very consistent. However, there are recurring motifs in the lyrics that come together to make it an interesting concept. Big Baby D.R.A.M. is largely about technology – most of all its relation to modern romance. Most tracks here reference this somehow. He raps about changing his number to cut off old girlfriends on ‘Change My #’ and asks for Erykah Badu’s Wifi password as a form of confessing his love on ‘WiFi’. Even seemingly unrelated tracks like the payday-anthem ‘Cash Machine’ reference this motif (“I love it when you talk to me / My cash machine”) by expressing mundane points through the lens of modern social technology. The lyrics won’t amaze anyone, and are occasionally cringeworthy (“I choose you like a Pokémon”). Much like with the beats, their simplicity seems a part of the point of the album, rather than something lacking from it.

To me, Big Baby D.R.A.M. is a reminder that music doesn’t have to be serious or boundary-pushing to be great. Sure, there is a lot to appreciate in the attempts of artists to do something no one’s ever done before, and to carve out spaces for new sounds. But when those two goofy looped piano chords of ‘Broccoli’ come on, I’m already having too much fun to think about artistic integrity