Since breaking big with "Versace" and "Hannah Montana," the Atlanta rap trio Migos have watched their quirky triplet flow take over radio largely without them. Since then, their struggle to advance from curiosities to superstars has been threefold: They've had to remind everyone who popularized the flow, prove to naysayers that they're great at rapping, and log follow-up hits to galvanize the listener base at retail. Subsequent releases tended to succeed at addressing one of these points at the expense of the others: 2014's No Label 2 was riddled with scathing rebukes for imitators, while the same year's Rich Nigga Timeline was an excellent display of the trio as pure MCs. Last summer's debut studio album Yung Rich Nation reached for hits and succeeded marginally with "One Time" and "Pipe It Up," though the commercial success of the album was hampered by its sequencing and a too-abrupt release campaign borne out of an arrest, incarceration, and tour cancellation. For every advance, it seemed, there was misfortune lurking in the distance.

The Migos' return to the YRN franchise this month might seem like a retrenchment, a rejuvenating dip in familiar waters, but the spirit YRN 2 most shares with its predecessor is its foregrounding of fun and chemistry. With little to prove (except a stake in the ownership of the meteorically popular dab dance), the group lets loose a relentless volley of absurdist humor and cartoonishly aggressive threats. YRN 2 is an hour of these three bouncing oddball pop culture references off each other, racing breakneck flows through unpredictable turns of phrase.

As such, it's possible that this mixtape makes a better collection of verses than a body of songs. These exercises don't always come affixed to easy hooks or inviting beats. The production comes from frequent Migos collaborators Dun Deal ("Hannah Montana"), Zaytoven ("Versace"), Murda Beatz ("Pipe It Up"), and more, but most of the sounds here revolve around dark, minor key melodies. "Chances" and "Commando" have a stark, glacial beauty that recalls early-'80s Cure. Zaytoven's "Bars" beat outfits impish piano with a bassline so deep and flat that half of it sounds like kick drum hits. It suits the trio's lurid plug talk just fine, but doesn't stand to invite anyone in that wasn't already hip to the inner workings of the Migos universe.

That's not a setback so much as a smart read on the group's strengths. While sunnier outings like Back to the Bando's "Look at My Dab" and *Yung Rich Nation'*s "One Time" helped increase the group's national profile, these records don't feel as natural on them: The songs from the first YRN tape that hit did so out of sheer force of personality, not calculated pursuit of urban radio. It happened naturally, which is a difficult set of circumstances to recreate.

Like its predecessor, YRN 2 is a carefree swing between transgressive tough talk and morning-after reflection, and the extremes have never been more extreme than they are here. Early in the record, "Plan B" unveils the group's crass paternity contingency measure: offering sexual partners emergency morning-after contraceptive medication ("I gave my bitch a Plan B cause she was my plan b.") It's a mortifying, too-real glimpse into the logistics of being a nouveau riche party animal in a field where your clout can bend morality to suit your desires and just, honestly, several steps south of fun. On the other end of the tape is the closer "Chapter 1," where the team spells out the specifics of the struggle to make it out of poverty and the precarious business of staying up and out of trouble in gripping detail. It's no coincidence that the latter is perhaps the closest thing YRN 2 offers to a surefire hit; two years on from their first nationwide exposure, the Migos continue to shine the brightest when they're not trying too hard.