After becoming a fixture with Houston strip club and radio DJs, melodic Texas rapper Don Toliver was invited to a glass mansion on the water in Hawaii by Travis Scott. Together, the two made “Can’t Say,” a track on the back half of Astroworld that was Toliver’s breakout moment. Astroworld had something for everyone: Drake rapping about falling asleep after popping half a Xanax, Travis crooning over Tame Impala, a detour into the druggy haze of The Weeknd, Stevie Wonder harmonica lines. But Don Toliver pierced through the superstar glitz with his unique voice, which resembled a soulful robot.

Nearly two years later, Don Toliver is still inseparable from Travis Scott. He signed to Scott’s Cactus Jack imprint, but outside of appearances on the group album JACKBOYS and snippets passed around by those who have yet to miss a Travis merch bundle, he didn’t release much music. Toliver’s debut album, Heaven or Hell, is his first real follow-up to his Astroworld moment, but most importantly, it’s an attempt to stand on his own.

Unfortunately, listening to Heaven or Hell is like watching a younger brother mimic their older brother. Toliver’s album has all the makings of a typical Travis Scott project. It features the producers who precision-tooled his arena-ready sound (Wondagurl, Frank Dukes, and TM88), the unmistakable Mike Dean synthesizers, mailed-in guest verses from sundry Migos, and melody-heavy rap songs that can seamlessly blend into any playlist. It even has most of the same flaws: tracks like “After Party” come with verses that exist solely to fill time until the chorus. “Okay, I pull up, hop at the after party/You and all your friends, yeah, they love to get naughty,” sings Don on the hook. It works just fine, and you can imagine it playing anywhere—a Soho boutique, a Jenner Instagram story, a Rolling Loud set—but it’s hard to forget that it’s simply Don Toliver in Scott’s spot.

There’s a handful of good moments, all of which could have been reference tracks Travis passed on. “Cardigan” blends a perfectly crafted chorus with lush production; there’s a reason why fans were crying out for it after its YouTube snippet. Written out, some of Don Toliver’s hooks look like satire, “Don’t wa-wa-waste it/Don’t wa-wa-waste it,” he croons on “Wasted.” But over the grim Cássio production, reminiscent of an early Metro Boomin beat, it’s irresistible. And Don Toliver can sing; he’s spoken about the influence of R&B artists like Bobby Womack, and his 2018 mixtape was called Donny Womack. Though he rarely gets the chance to explore his emotional side, the stripped-down and soulful “Company” is the closest Don Toliver gets to staking out a style of his own.

Still, we never learn anything about Don Toliver, or why we might be listening to him. On “Candy,” he sounds lost in the production, and it’s hard not to imagine that the song would have been better as an instrumental. There are no hints of his personality, his musical taste, his daily life. Does he just wake up, go to the club, stand behind the DJ, drink too much, go home, and repeat it the next day? It’s disappointing, because it’s clear that while there might be more to Don Toliver than this, for now he seems comfortable existing in Travis Scott’s shadow.