2 Chainz and Lil Wayne have been running mates for almost a decade now; following their collaborative 2007 hit "Duffle Bag Boy," Wayne has appeared as a featured guest on every 2 Chainz album, and 2 Chainz has often returned the favor on mixtapes and the 2013 single "Rich as Fuck." It’s a naturally absurd pairing: At their best, both rappers’ similarly skewed perspective allows them boil down the universe into an endless supply of WTF punchlines. On Juicy J's strip club ode "Bandz a Make Her Dance," for instance, 2 Chainz and Wayne deliver sometimes-head-scratching non sequiturs about their favorite pastime, and it’s representative of their combined cheekiness. It’s also the first song that comes to mind when 2 Chainz raps, "You said, ‘You can make a million rappin’ ‘bout some pussy,’" on "Dedication," the opener to their new project, ColleGrove, recounting some wizened Wayne advice. 2 Chainz made a name for himself not only by listening to Wayne but also following his lead, so it’s a bit odd that ColleGrove has him spending so much time dragging Wayne behind him.

That isn’t by design, of course. The intention of ColleGrove is, as the hometown-referencing name suggests, to merge the rappers’ two worlds, and to also display 2 Chainz’s enviable respect for Wayne. "Dedication" is a "Big Brother"-style narration of the duo’s longstanding friendship, with 2 Chainz paying homage to Wayne’s impact on his career. (The record is billed as a 2 Chainz album likely because of Wayne’s unresolved disputes with Cash Money, making this the ultimate outpouring of gratitude.) And in a way, ColleGrove is itself a dedication, to both Lil Wayne and the era of freaky one-liners he ushered in. But Wayne is now a shell of the rapper 2 Chainz revered, and here, standing beside Atlanta’s zinger king, he struggles to get an interesting word in edgewise.

At his peak, Lil Wayne was an efficient and effective puncher, taking compact swings and landing in flurries. There are glimpses of that here, but more often than not Wayne is merely trying to keep pace. At this point, he simply has trouble matching 2 Chainz’s outlandishness bar-for-bar. For every "I’m so high the blunt feel like a dumbbell/ These niggas tiny like a spider on a Spud Webb," Wayne provides, 2 Chainz delivers five delirious winners like "I had a sitdown with Farrakhan/ Turned the White House to the Terrordome." This unbalance becomes an issue on songs like "Rolls Royce Weather Every Day" and "Bentley Truck," where Wayne sputters so much that you wish this was just a 2 Chainz album.

To be fair, some of it is. Six tracks are 2 Chainz-only, including two highlights—"MFN Right" and "Not Invited"—which originally appeared on his recent EP, Felt Like Cappin, where they benefitted from the shorter running time; without Wayne verses, they feel out of place here. It’s also odd that one of that EP’s standouts, "Back on My Bullshyt," which features of the better Lil Wayne verses in recent memory, didn’t make it to ColleGrove.

"MFN Right" and "Not Invited" also standout as the sonic outliers here, one minimalist, the other soulful. Everything else lies along a gradient of glazed synths that mushroom, percolate, or oscillate, allowing just enough room to accommodate both Wayne’s whine and 2 Chainz’s groggy drawl. The production credits are a road map of the pair’s collective journey, from one-time in-house Cash Money producer Mannie Fresh, to modern trap architects Mike WiLL Made It, Southside, and Zaytoven, to rap’s current all stars Metro Boomin, TM88, and FKi. Their collective effort doesn’t quite live up to their pedigree, but it’s still formidable.

That is, excepting the Mannie Fresh-produced "Gotta Lotta," with its unnecessarily dense layering and nursery rhyme hook. It’s symbolic of why ColleGrove stalls. There are moments where everything goes right, like on the well-paced "Bounce" or the London on da Track-produced VIP checklist "Section," and you can see how the album may have worked in theory. These rappers have an undeniable chemistry, and when they both find their best, the album is pure fun. But more often than not, ColleGrove plays out like 2 Chainz pulling his friend and mentor up by his bootstraps while ceding a bit of the spotlight in the process. It’s a generous gesture, but a costly one.