Young Jeezy's proper debut has been a long time coming, though it's been a treat hearing his weathered, weezy rasp on mixtapes (most notably DJ Drama's Trap or Die). He is a conduit between the South, where most of today's commercially lucrative hip-hop originates, and a lagging East Coast scene. Let's Get It is not the best rap album of the year and Jeezy is hardly the world's greatest lyricist. But he slings a sometimes-creepy, sometimes-clever, sometimes-chaotic charisma and he rides that magnetism to a mostly brilliant solo entrance to the bigs.
On opener "Thug Motivation 101" Jeezy pounds his chest and growls, "I used to hit the kitchen lights, cockroaches er'where/ Now I hit the kitchen lights, there's marble floors er'where" over tense, eerie keyboards. It's a joyous moment but also the scariest album opener I've heard this year. He breathes hard on the track and stares down his microphone like it hates him. He punctuates the song with his calling card. By now Da Snowman's ad-libs are things of legend. Unbridled "Daaaayuums" and everlasting "Yeeeeaaahs" or "Thaaaaat's riiiiight"s punctuate each song. For most MCs this would weigh down their words. For Jeezy, it's the essence of his persona: maniacal shouting, catchphrases, euphoria, instant gratification. There's no parsing through flow and lyrics and drum machines. He hits hard and quickly.
"My Hood", while cheap, easy, and out of character for the steadily mean-mugged Jeezy, is blissful, thanks to a chintzy Casio beat and some sort of My Hood=Our Hood claptrap. "Get Ya Mind Right" runs on horror movie organ fuel, like a Goblin-Argento soundtrack redux. "And Then What" finds Mannie Fresh in fine, fat-faced form while Jeezy heads down to his "Auntie House" before he goes boom, boom clap. "Go Crazy" is the height of the Mason-Dixon bridge. It is also the best 1998 Roc-A-Fella drug rap song in some time, featuring producer Don Cannon's spare tom rolls, classy horns and a killer chorus. A recent remix featuring New York kings Jay-Z and Fat Joe was one of the more obvious (and thrilling) things to happen to hip-hop in recent months and confims Jeezy's universality.
All the fun shit aside, at 19 tracks and no skits, Let's Get It is long and can become a chore to wade through. Barring the Bun B-assisted classic "Trap or Die" and the soul-jockeying "Talk to Em" the album's second half really lags and Jeezy's allure ultimately wears. Why more artists don't follow the Illmatic code remains a mystery. We buy mixtapes for a reason, dudes.
