Sequel to the EP from two years earlier which met with considerable public success and which confirmed him as one of the best rappers on the circuit by specialized critics. The production is entirely made by Harry Fraud. Guests are Chinx, 2 Chainz, Fat Joe, French Montana, Jim Jones and Rick Hyde. As in the first chapter, the cover represents a scene from "Scarface" (1983), in which Alejandro Sosa and Tony Montana meet for the first time and here shake hands. The back cover features Tony looking at the night sky and seeing the Goodyear airship pass by with "Plugs II" written.
"When Tony Met Sosa" boasts one of the most beautiful beats of the year, Harry Fraud takes a smooth sax from Frankie MIller's "Good Time Love", adds a dry drum midtempo and harmonious strings to support the velvety, slow, confident delivery of Benny the Butcher. This sounds like one of his best tracks, and at the same time, the MC doesn't sound at his best, his flow sounds rustier, less fresh than usual. The boom bap of "Overall" boasts a dark samples from a Pete Knutsen song from the soundtrack of a Norwegian thriller movie of the late seventies: excellent bass, good fresh drum, slow cumbersome delivery by Benny, then a posthumous hook and verse from the MC of Queens Chinx is added, he sounds excellent on a production that gives mafia vibes, Harry Fraud did a good job.
For track number three, the producer surpasses himself and goes beyond. The sample is something I've heard before: Elcamino's "Money for Ball", 2020. The sample is the same: "胎児の夢 (Taiji No Yume)", the nine-minute title track that closes Yoshiko Sai's 1977 album. Her voice is transcendental. Harry Fraud puts on a sparkling snare drum and a harsh downtempo drum: this soundscape was born predestined to become a classic, this track is not, unfortunately. For some reason, 2 Chainz sounds better than Benny, with his almost random style, and he's more orderly. "Live by It" completes twelve minutes and a first part of EP at the same level as the first chapter, or at least close. Boom bap, dirty midtempo drum machine, melodic soulful sound, dirty and glossy rhythm at the same time, Benny's inspired flowing delivery destroying another beat.
The remaining fifteen minutes of the tape seem to wink more at the charts and the mainstream audience. The flute loop proposed by Harry Fraud in this track should be melodic, but it's too tight and difficult to absorb, even if the track length is short: distant skinny drum, lively snare, the Black Soprano Family rapper plays unfit here, then Fat Joe arrives. He's a veteran, he needs no introduction, yet he feels the need to throw adlibs at random trying to copy the most recent rappers with a tag that looks more like a cricket verse than a real distinctive tag. Joey Crakk attacks well and delivers hardcore, now he's definitely far from his worst years, even if his lyrics are shoddy, suspect and effortless. "No Instructions" has a melodic flute loop, the rhythm is one of the smoothest in the edition, there's a sparse and distant drum midtempo, the track should work, however, Benny provides bars with a cumbersome and decent rapping, it's little inspired.
Harry Fraud provides another notable production in "Longevity", boom bap jazz with drum downtempo and samples from "La Verda Es Que Me Gustas" by Los Terricolas. Decent slow delivery of The Butcher, French Montana sounds better than usual, Jim Jones closes by taking the track without anyone noticing. He's really back. "Survivor's Remorse" is an interesting introspective cut by Benny together with Rick Hyde: the two BSF rappers flow well on a jazz rhythm with a Harry Fraud melodic loop, with an accessible light drum. The rhythm is very good, the rap is solid, but the track suffers from the same problem as "No Instructions", it's excessively fluid for the raw style of both performers. Ninth and final track, "Thanksgiving", Benny offers two verses on a trap rhythm with melodic soul samples from Margie Joseph's "Punish Me" and a frantic distant snare drum.
This was a long one. In March 2021, I was coming from a period of continuous listening to Griselda material, so, I took a break of several months from listening to the albums released by the label. Everything starts to look the same, indistinguishable. After many months, I'm back on "Plugs 2", and it's not a good album, I mean, at the level of Griselda's best. And far from the first chapter. Rhythms, lyrics, flows, guests, it's all inferior to the first chapter. The production is created entirely by Harry Fraud, so, it should work, in theory: the first four songs have a wonderful sound, then the project is completely lost in its second part. Lyrically, Benny keeps faith with the arguments that have brought him good up to now and he doesn't change the formula: he knows how to rap on topics related to drugs and coke rap and he does that, okay. He goes very well.
The guests have nothing to do with what Benny the Butcher has done so far, and drag the project down, unlike the previous chapter, where the guests helped make the EP one of the best products of the entire season: Black Thought, Pusha-T and Jadakiss before, 2 Chainz, Fat Joe, French Montana now. Hits different. It's definitely voted for mainstream rankings and endorsement. Chinx gives value to his track, Rick Hyde is fine, Jim Jones went away on "Longevity" and took a Griselda track. Returning to the rapping of the main author, he plays slower, more cumbersome, easygoing, less focused than usual, on a glamorous slick production that isn't bad, it's very good, but doesn't quite fit his style, in my opinion. In addition, he proposes an annoying excess of hooks, some particularly long and suffering, which is practically unprecedented for him, and which serves to have airplay more than anything else. In fact, it's one of his more radio oriented projects, after his latest LP.
It comes out an album halfway between "Plugs 1" and "Burden of Proof", halfway between the street and the mainstream, between wanting to go back to street rap on dirty sound by Daringer and wanting to reaffirm once again to be a legend on clean sound by Hit-Boy. Both of those albums work because they are pure at least in their obvious intentions and don't distort their nature, while this one is kind of a mess, it doesn't work, it doesn't feel as essential as those others, even though it's not a bad album in any way.
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