Hot off of his debut studio album, Finally Famous, Big Sean comes back even stronger with his sophomore release, Dark Sky Paradise.

Featuring productions as well as features from the likes of Kanye West and Travi$ Scott, as well as Sean’s lyrical genius showing through through even with all the talent surrounding him. Filled with plenty of witty-but-not-appropriate-for-a-school-newspaper lyrics, as well as an impressively good flow in nearly every track, Dark Sky Paradise is impressively strong.

Though a decent amount of the album had already been released through singles (IDFWU, Blessings, One Man Can Change The World, Paradise) the rest of the album has a few faults and weaker tracks, but there are some major standouts like “All Your Fault” as well as my personal favorite, “I Know.”

Sean seems to be much more comfortable and willing to try new things, both lyrically and with his producers. The album starts off with a quick succession of hard-hitting tracks, but slows things down a bit in the back half of the album, allowing listeners to breathe at least a little. Sean seems to taking more risks musically, but some of the tracks seem to just blend together and sound extremely similar to one another.

Dark Sky Paradise is an extremely strong Sophomore effort from Big Sean, but there seems to be a little bit that’s just missing from it to propel the album from ‘great’ to ‘fantastic’. As an album that would have probably been on a lot of ‘Album of the Year’ lists last year, Dark Sky Paradise seems to be lacking that little something that would help it be remembered at the end of this year with efforts from Drake, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar anticipated to flood the market in 2015.