The Kid LAROI approaches his music like an artist allergic to the present tense, propelled by the anxious sense that the best moment has already passed and the worst one is imminent. BEFORE I FORGET, the Australian rapper’s sophomore album, arrives as a tightening of that impulse, a small but telling release that gathers the glossy, overexposed pop-rap he’s been circling since his teenage breakthrough and refracts it through a more self-conscious lens. 

The record’s lead-up singles, “A PERFECT WORLD,” “A COLD PLAY,” and “BACK WHEN YOU WERE MINE”—built from diaristic fragments, stadium-sized hooks, and the familiar ache of abandonment—don’t so much advance his sound as worry it, returning again and again to the same emotional cul-de-sac until the grooves start to show.

It’s no secret that BEFORE I FORGET succeeds LAROI’s widely public split from Tate McRae, a headline that the internet metabolized as it happened, flattening a private unraveling into caption fodder and speculative timelines. That visibility only intensified as the split coalesced into a stream of musical output, with McRae’s “TIT FOR TAT” and LAROI’s “A COLD PLAY” ricocheting off each other — ”Who was I to think that I could fix you, baby?” LAROI asks, only for McRae to respond, days later and far less ambiguously: “Fix your fucking self, kiss my ass for that.”

Though the album will no doubt benefit from the gravity of its surrounding drama, its tightened songwriting and streamlined approach suggest LAROI is at least thinking beyond the initial spike in attention. “RATHER BE,” a low-slung, mid-tempo slow-burner, trades anticipated rage for the dull ache of elapsed time, LAROI pleading, “I got so much to update you on, I’m beggin’ you, baby, to text me.” While on “THANK GOD,” the boom-baps and hi-hats fall away, leaving exposed nerves held together by airy electronics, detached percussion, and stacked, ghostly vocals. 

BEFORE I FORGET is a breakup album that knows exactly what it wants to be: tense and unflinching. By paring heartbreak down to its essentials, LAROI lets both regret and fleeting desire dominate, circling tender moments with the exhaustion of someone who knows his audience already has their preferred version of the story.