Album Review: BigXthaPlug, ‘Better Over Time’

BigXthaPlug, a Dallas, Texas, vocalist with a deep, grainy, and authoritative mic presence, is one of the most intriguing voices in years. He’s the rare twentysomething mainstream rapper that actually raps. He doesn’t rely on an android-like croon like Don Toliver or hearty “trap-soul” laments like Rod Wave. Instead, he spits hard and from the chest, his momentum hitting the ears like NFL linebacker Myles Garrett shoving wide receivers into gridiron grass. And happily, at least for old heads disenchanted with the state of modern rap, he frequently pays homage to OGs past and present. On 6WA, a consistently entertaining project with his 600 Entertainment crew released last March, he invited Texas-émigré-turned-West-Coast-pioneer the D.O.C. to offer a benediction, then referenced the old-school hardness of Too $hort and the late Eazy-E. On his new album, Better Over Time, producers Tony Coles and Charley Cooks sample the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Sky’s the Limit” while Leon Thomas revives 112’s classic chorus: “Sky is the limit and you know that you can have what you want, be what you want.”

Ironically, given his meteoric rise, Better Over Time often presents fame and fortune as a mirage that can’t mask lifelong pain. In an RS cover story on BigXthaPlug earlier this year, journalist Eric Diep wrote, “He’s in better spirits now, and not making sad music anymore.” Perhaps Better Over Time isn’t as persistently melancholy as I Hope You’re Happy, his Billboard Top 10-charting suite of broken-hearted collaborations with Nashville’s top country stars that helped land him a spot at the 2025 CMA Awards, where he performed “Pray Hard” with Luke Combs. Yet his frustration with seeing his friends and neighbors turn him into an object of gossip and envy after he successfully overcame poverty simmers until it nearly overwhelms what should be a glorious, Life After Death-styled victory lap. Much like on Baby Keem’s Ca$ino, another recent rap epic undone by its author’s inability to overcome lingering trauma, BigX can’t always navigate around his unnamed haters. His main instinct is to pull out a wad of bills and fling it in their faces.

Despite the peevish tone of Better Over Time, BigX remains a ferociously magnetic presence, someone who retains a listener’s focus with ease, whether it’s alone or with collaborators like GloRilla, who snaps with canny sharpness alongside him on “FAF.” Rap aesthetes have blanched at some of BigX’s arena-pop moves, like pairing with Ava Max on Better Over Time’s advance single, the airy and declamatory “Burn.” But “Burn” also underlines his expansive nature and his ability to encompass different sonic moods without cynicism. (The single even gives BigX an opportunity to celebrate his cover glow-up, as he raps, “Who from my state front-page Rolling Stone and proudly rep they city?”) Elsewhere, he blithely offers a chipmunk-soul delight reminiscent of early Kanye West on “Lite” while comparing himself to Jodeci and “Lil Wayne on Tha Carter III” and dominates a cipher with critical favorites Babyface Ray and Lil Yachty on “Believe.” Dark clouds may be slowly distorting BigX’s frame of mind, but moments of pleasure often shine through. “Been collectin’ this green/This big n—- like salad with dressin’,” he delightfully brags on “Cracced.”

BigX frequently alludes to the importance of family. The first voice on Better Over Time belongs to his mother. “It seems like just yesterday, you was fighting and getting kicked out of school and shit. Now look at your ass,” she says on “Stand on Business.” “You’re a boss, a legend.” He talks about making money to feed his two children and support his extended family and boasts on “Da Fucc” that he’s spent so much money on guns that “my grandma strapped with a stick.” “Million-dollar n—-, shit I got, you can’t afford this/Tryna stay off the Forbes list ‘cause that’s when they gon’ want shit,” he says on “Peace of Mind.” However, a few cuts later, he contradicts himself on “Give It All” when he raps, “I want the billions, the trillions, and whatever else, ‘cause the millions, I already got.” Big numbers like that will certainly put him on the IRS’s radar. It’s also proof that BigX is working out his ideas and beliefs in real time.

Better Over Time should give him an opportunity to expunge his anguish and, if not necessarily heal, then find clarity on why his preternatural talent has brought a mixture of blessings and frustration. He’s had plenty of success, from Drake and Beyoncé cosigns to Wingstop licensing his 2024 hit “The Largest” for a widely aired 2025 commercial starring NBA sharpshooter Jalen Green. So why does he feel overwhelmed like “a slave with all these chains”? 

As he grinds away over the album’s 42 minutes, lucidity seems distant. “Wonder if I said fuck it and stayed in the streets sellin’ dope,” he fumes on “Lately F Rap.” “Would them n—-s still speak on my name for some clout?/Probably not, ‘cause I wouldn’t have an image.” On “Heal Me,” a cut that almost drowns in Florida singer Fridayy’s blandly Christian fervor, BigX admits that he’s riding in a “double R” Rolls-Royce:  “My rug’s been damp from all these tears/But I been fightin’ how I feel for some years/I think it’s time I take this moment to heal.” Still, the final track centers on an interpolation of Harry Nilsson’s “One.” As producer Bandplay sings, “One is the loneliest number that there ever was,” BigX raps, “I’m out by myself all alone/Don’t feel welcomed in what I call home.” It’s a bit of a downer.

It’s easy to dismiss BigX’s anguish as the familiar pop trope of a rich man’s blues or, as Biggie once put it, mo’ money, mo’ problems. But he’s only 28 and clearly struggling under the glare of increased expectations from fans, his community, and the music industry. He may still be prone to youthful mistakes, as an August DWI arrest on unlawful firearm and marijuana possession charges suggested. Better Over Time implicitly promises that he’ll keep evolving in the years to come, even as it withholds the satisfaction of hearing him find closure now.