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Here’s the recipe for a good Coke Wave mixtape: First, add one French Montana, but make sure he’s spitting with the hunger of a Bronx hustler ready to bet every last wad of cash in his jeans on a rap battle. Then, carefully fold in Harlemite Max B and add a healthy dash of Grand Cru Remy Martin. While he’ll surely heat up with bars indebted to the styles of Biggie, Jay-Z, and Tupac, that extra dash of sauce will have him singing melodies like he’s giving a drunken Motown audition in another lifetime. Finally, marinate their sleazy bars and catchy hooks in beats that transform 20th-century classics—the kind heard at retirement home parties—into headknocking bangers. Soon, you’ll have Max B pouring his heart into a melodic street rap ballad that channels the soul of a ’60s Marlena Shaw record, while Frenchy cooly raps about moving bricks over a Dark Side of the Moon flip.
All this propelled the deliriously fun and hard-nosed duo to the crest of New York rap in the late 2000s, before the wave crashed with Max B’s incarceration in 2009. Coke Wave 3.5: Narcos, the second album Max B has released since he walked free in November, reignites the infectious dynamic between Max and French but doesn’t surf on legacy. It captures what made one of New York hip-hop’s greatest link-ups so captivating, but also calls into question why they would break away from the distinct “wavy” strain of rap they claimed in the first place.
The duo’s chemistry shines on standouts like “Whippin That Wave,” where they flow effortlessly (and shamelessly) over DJ Clue’s 1998 “Queensfinest” instrumental for Nas with the same confidence shown on Coke Wave 2’s “Wave Thang”—a harder take on Dre and Snoop’s classic for Uptown dudes with four Pelle Pelle jackets in their closets. But when they attempt to flex over a sample of KC & the Sunshine Band’s disco classic “That’s The Way (I Like It)” on “Ever Since U Left Me,” they lose sync with one another and rap aimlessly on a beat that sounds like cliché fashion catwalk music.
French Montana has long approached hip-hop like an A&R hunting for the next hit; it’s a skill he honed years before he scored a chart-topping Afrobeats-inspired single largely carried by Swae Lee’s vocals. But back in the aughts, when he was inserting himself into his own Cocaine City DVDs, he knew how to hold his ground beside a killer freestyle by Uptown rapper Al-Doe or raw footage of Dipset getting jumped at Rucker Park. On this tape French finds himself back in that DVD-mixtape era pocket on “Heaven,” but he loses it on “Make America Wavy Again (MAWA),” where he attempts to engineer a tri-state nightclub banger that fizzles faster than a $500 bottle of Champagne. And while a Murda Beatz trap beat may have worked for French and Drake a decade ago on their hit “No Shopping,” it leaves his brother Max stumbling on “The Race.”
Outside of a handful of moments when this duo seamlessly clicks together again, the album’s highs arrive when Max proves that his once-mythic return is worth celebrating, and not just with a hashtag or a shoutout from the rappers he’s influenced. Sure, the Dame Grease-produced “I Don’t Know,” one of this album’s best songs, is essentially a re-run of “DJ Saved My Life” from his 2009 Quarantine mixtape. But it doesn’t come off like an awkward bid to recapture past magic, like when Eminem’s 2024 single “Houdini” interpolated the “Without Me”-era Slim Shady persona that’s no longer authentic to him. Max B just sounds like he’s picking up where he left off with his confidence intact.
It’s great that Coke Wave 3.5 exists, and even better that it doesn’t sound like Max and French forgot about their illustrious past, the way 2019’s fleeting Coke Wave 4 did. But what’s most refreshing is witnessing Max B finally get the opportunity to grow his trademark sound beyond prison walls. His chance arrives on the potent “Sunday School,” where he sings about his first love and his life journey with a level of introspection only hinted at in older cuts like “Lord Is Tryna Tell You Somethin.” Building on the risqué soulfulness of records like “Sexy Love,” it feels like the kind of song the late A$AP Yams dreamed of when he vowed to hire Biggaveli to perform at his own wedding one day. Over 15 years after their original Coke Wave run, French Montana and Max B’s music has traveled far beyond New York’s hip-hop faithful. Their efforts to chase that broader audience on Coke Wave 3.5 don’t always land, but the album’s best moments reaffirm what evangelized them in the first place.
