There should be a German word for the mixture of joy and sadness felt in watching the giants of 2000s Roc-A-Fella navigate the nostalgia circuit. Cam'ron? He has embraced his role as Internet hero, selling capes, dancing the meringue in Vines, and occasionally releasing mixtapes with moments of low-rent greatness on them. Right now, he's collaborating with A-Trak on an EP, Federal Reserve, which places him lovingly back in the chirpy '03 soul-rap that defined his peak. "To me, the intersection between my world and Cam’s world is very much tied to that New York, downtown, street wear kind of movement," A-Trak told Complex. "It’s kids that are happy to hear his music and also jump around to electronic music and hear some Atlanta stuff and some new rap."
This sounds an awful lot like a Girl Talk show, where the above scenario would take place in three minutes. In many ways, Girl Talk's music is the gushing id of dilettante culture, a glutinous ball of disparate pop songs mashed together so you only taste the sugar. Now, Gregg Gillis has found himself working with Freeway and the partnership has the same bittersweet tang to it. Since departing officially from Roc-A-Fella after 2007's Free at Last, Freeway has been in search of a cultural foothold; his attempted rebrand as a Rhymesayers artist was too slippery to stick, and then he drifted momentarily to Babygrande. Throughout, he's never lost his fire, but without a larger context or a new story to tell, he was stuck in an uncomfortable limbo.
Collaborating with Girl Talk doesn't exactly free him from said limbo. But it does give him something more temporary and invigorating—a shot in the arm, a needed jolt of energy that his last two releases have lacked entirely. Girl Talk's production is legit: he has the sound and feel of those early Roc-A-Fella releases internalized, and he spits it out convincingly. "Tolerated" gets things off to a rickety start; the big faux-Just Blaze beat Girl Talk provides is too top-heavy and cluttered to move effectively and Waka Flocka Flame raps at about 12-percent energy. The chorus is awkward and strained, all elbows.
But from there, things take off. "I Can Hear Sweat" has a strafing arpeggiated synth and a heavy-breathing Biggie sample from "Who Shot Ya" that is so tailor-made for a Jadakiss guest verse that you almost hallucinate him rapping on it before he appears. He is murderously intense on it, as is Free. "Suicide" fits a lot of little events into the beat without getting too distracting—eerie childlike vocal effects, spaghetti-western whistles, KRS-One vocal snippets. The taffy-pulled strings on "Tell Me Yeah", a bald-faced appeal to "Oh Boy" nostalgists, are stretched out just right. There are one or two "Oh come on, why is THIS happening now?!" switch-ups in the beats, which feel like Girl Talk elbowing his way to the fore. But they are rare, and there is a palpable love in the details in Gillis's production. The highest compliment you could pay his work is that it's easy to forget he's involved at all while it's playing. What Gillis has given Free is his best solo project in at least four years.
