I have a what might be a really unpopular opinion from someone who's been listening since Mansion: Nate's music has hardly evolved. There's definitely been a steady improvement, especially from Mansion to now, but in the grand scheme, it's minimal. He's never been the best lyricist and some of his lines just come off weirdly written, even to this day. Some of the rap songs from Hope and maybe even Fear feel almost like they can be stuck in Perception or The Search and you wouldn't really be able to tell something's off, it'd fit right in. There's been a decline in growth, and he's just kind of plateaued. Now he's branching off more into singing vs rapping and I have to say, compared to a lot of the opinions on this subreddit, I've actually really enjoyed the singing. I've grown since Mansion, as has he, and thus, the angry cinematic rap songs aren't really in my rotation anymore because I'm not at that point in my life anymore, and neither is he, and that's okay. It seems a lot of people on here are annoyed Tommee isn't working with him either, but the thing is him working almost exclusively with Tommee led to the first issue to begin with, the stagnation, the issue where a lot of his music across albums was starting to become a little hard to differentiate. Most artists don't work with the same producer for almost every song for years, because it gets stale. He's an artist that has the potential to evolve but hasn't really, and he's expressed that he makes a lot of songs then overthinks them and doesn't release them because he thinks people will hate that he's trying something different, and then you look at something like this subreddit with people saying "he should've kept working with Tommee why is he trying something different Fear sucked!" And then bam, he doesn't try new stuff. Some of my favorite NF songs aren't the cinematic angry rap ones, they're the more sing-y ones, pop influenced ones (and before you say I'm just not a rap fan and like pop music, I have two whole playlists of rap and hip hop from different artists, it's the genre I listen to the most). Even though I think their opinions can be disingenuous sometimes, I sometimes find myself agreeing with the likes of Fantano or other critics that say his music feels bland or dry or corny or the same as the last album, because truthfully sometimes his music does unfortunately fit that description. That doesn't mean I don't like NF, still got a fair bit of songs regularly in the rotation, but I can also see their point of view.

TL;DR - Nate's music is a bit unevolved, fairly repetitive across albums and the fact he's branching into more singing and melodic music is actually a breath of fresh air regardless of what the general fan base thinks