Gucci Mane’s latest album, Episodes, begins on a tempered, practically restrained note. He calls out “It’s Gucci!” in the negative space between acoustic strums and keyboard effects, with his signature ad-lib fading into the ether like a distant recollection. It leads into a verse that lands like a confessional, as Gucci recounts how he did stupid shit like “kick hoes out of cars” and racked up federal charge after federal charge, his voice weary with the weight of introspection. But before the track gets bogged down by nostalgia, the hook interrupts to return us to the hard-nosed version of the iconoclast—he’s back to boasting about $980,000 watches and offering only “dick and bubble gum” to all his groupies.
That oscillation in his focus is representative of the high points of Gucci Mane’s latest era. Since his 2016 release from federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., emerging clean and sober, his creative output has largely served to maintain the momentum of his Obama-era explosion in profile. His pen and personality have remained staunchly intact—abundantly clear with his 2024 Gangsta Grillz tape that landed like an iced out, diamond-encrusted time capsule from 2011—but too often, large swaths of his post-COVID projects feel like vestigial organs. Episodes is similarly plagued by stretches of indistinct writing and sanded-down production that feels indistinguishable from his recent work; its sheer length—clocking in at just over an hour—means the more stock trap motifs in the back half start to feel anonymous. But when Gucci breaks out of the malaise, drilling into his morbid humor with self-awareness and clarity and settling into Episodes’ understated beats, his magnetic pull is as potent as ever.
The topical crux of Episodes coincides with Gucci’s latest book, a memoir that details his struggles with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and addiction, as well as his eventual (and ongoing) recovery. That lens gives Gucci the freedom to sprinkle in uncomfortably dark tidbits, melding vulnerability with humor. “Voices” is laced with paranoid musings on the hook, spitting, “I keep hearing this voice in my head/‘Fuck them niggas, they left you for dead,’” with quiet fury. While the titular hook on “Psycho” is a tad repetitive, Gucci’s vocal tics over the Scooby Doo-esque beat are dazzling: after utilizing a gruff register on the first verse, he tries to break through the gates of heaven with his crooning line, “They say my mental health is declinin’/Is they tellin’ the truth or is they lyin’?” Even when Gucci skews back towards the general in his lyrical focus, like on “Gucci Special,” where he likens himself to an exterminator of snitches and the Terminator consecutive breaths, he tweaks his voice to make it feel like he’s rapping with his eyes rolled back in his head.
The front half of Episodes is the ideal marriage between Gucci’s intrinsic personality and the output from the production team—the beats are sparse and tense, not unlike the tenor of 2017’s Droptopwop. “Only Time,” with its ghostly wailing sample, could soundtrack a level of Luigi’s Mansion as Gucci touts his self-made bona fides (“The only time a nigga fronted me way back in ’95/The only time I ever need some help when I turn 99,” he spits with glee). “Still So Icy” transports the titillating sensation of having your fight-or-flight nervous system activated with a muted interpolation of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” whirring in the background. The massive production crew (which could fill out two full baseball teams with room to spare) is riddled with figures like Go Grizzly, Pooh Beatz, Bankroll Got It, and Honorable C.N.O.T.E., who have helped Gucci entrench himself as Southern trap’s greatest working titan, making Frankenstein monsters in the form of beats with their unique quirks. Their shared experience with Gucci’s idiosyncrasies shine, so when he’s in sync with the hi-hats and juxtaposed with serene yet haunting vocal samples, the production feels especially made-to-order.
But the back half contains too many instances where restrained production coincides with Gucci veering into autopilot mode. Coming off the emotional highs of the early stretch, tracks like “Rich Nigga Problems” and “Record Deal,” which are flooded with 808s and flattened by stock boasts, won’t live on after one or two plays of Episodes. These moments, which include most of Disc 2 (save for the Bossman Dlow-assisted “Hit”)—and the guitar-led “Cold,” where Gucci attempts to get into a sultry melodic bag—are indicative of his recent bottom-tier songs: inoffensive on the whole, but doomed to be gone from memory once removed from your earbuds.
Episodes depends on Gucci’s gravitational pull—few people could make a devotional ballad like “I Need You” land with such tenderness in the middle of a sea of trap beats without sounding egregiously corny. Overall, the record isn’t spectacular, which owes in part to the diminishing returns of Gucci trying to be “on” for 23 tracks of a similar tone. But Episodes still feels like an artifact of an affecting chapter in the midst of a healing journey, especially when held up against Gucci’s recent run of interviews where he and his wife detail his mental health struggles and he links up with past childhood friends. The closing track of Disc 1 neatly wraps that conceit in a bow. “Back Cooking” witnesses Gucci and OJ da Juiceman find their way back to each other, trading blistering verses like it’s 2009 and we’re all wearing XXXL Tees again: Their raps about dealing bricks over piano keys are free-wheeling and bursting with joy, unburdened by the stress of what has been or fear of what’s coming, falling back into the warm embrace of the familiar.
