Picture it: Kevin Gates cuddles a miniature bulldog before strolling past an exotic car collection and stepping into an elevator. Two floors up, the doors open to a Beyoncé concert, and Gates has a ticket. As Adderall meets alcohol, the Baton Rouge rapper leans into the giddy delirium, tearing off his shirt and singing with the crowd, lyrics be damned. The vivid celebration scene Gates conjures on “Yonce Freestyle,” a single from his new album The Ceremony, hovers as high as his most infamous performance photo. So why does the record sound so firmly rooted to the ground?
The different failures to launch across these 17 songs are, in part, an unfortunate consequence of an even keel. Anguish has been a key force stringing together Gates’ weathered bleeding-heart blend of Dirty South beats and unflinching “up-North” lyrics. But grizzled street raps aren’t standard on The Ceremony. Before the lyre-textured album opener unfurls, Gates ad-libs “Real medicine music.” The theme here is indeed healing: through reflection, redemption, and plenty of makeup sex. Phone calls from old off-the-porch contacts ring in his ears as a symphony of birdsong (“Birds Calling”). Sometimes, things get a little hokey. On the cut actually titled “Healing,” Gates is proudly “doing yoga and attracting my twin flame through meditation.” Elsewhere, he cleanses his Mercedes Benz with sage (“God Slippers”).
Well-documented goofiness aside, Gates never aspired to be a meme rapper, and he’s spoken about developing a signature poring over Tupac, Nas, and JAY-Z. Fellow Louisiana gentleman Lil Wayne eventually plucked Gates from a prolific mixtape run to be a bubble player on Wayne’s YMCMB roster, but Gates never popped. After he cultivated an underground following on his label Bread Winners’ Association, Atlantic caught up. Gates had already been mining Taylor Swift melodies for needle drops. His mainstream crossover felt destined, despite the turbulence of his early career.
But over a decade since inking a big-time deal that almost immediately lost momentum due to a devastatingly timed prison sentence, which he addresses on “Letter 2 My Fans,” Gates sounds weary of radio rap. He’s a hall-of-famer as far as major-label debuts go—2016’s Islah exemplifies the spoils of corporatization with minimal compromise in every belted hook. But where a more polished, pop-minded sound was jet fuel for Gates there, it’s quicksand on The Ceremony. The writing is all about moving forward, but the sonics keep Gates frozen in time, fused to an outdated Hot 100 sound that’s incongruous with his matured, quieter stylings.
While Gates is doing sun salutations on the beach, the veteran producers crowding The Ceremony seem content to splash around in the shallows. There’s potential in a more Zen effect for Gates— take the line, “Put her arms over her head and move that ass without no hands” on “Broken Men,” which he trills in a tone so theatrically somber it’s camp. But no one in the studio was ready to capitalize, and Gates’ monkish sermons fall flat atop one too many servings of limp “type-beat” trap. His pen isn’t dry, but his contacts list might be—someone should facilitate an intro with DJ Haram. Longtime collaborator DJ Chose demonstrates the strongest sense of Gates’ style as they dig into trauma on the ballad “Heal You.”
Gates hasn’t lost the dextrous lyricism that carried pre-Atlantic gems like The Luca Brasi Story’s near-acapella “IHOP.” The crashing piano chords of the don’t-give-up diatribe “Do It Again” clearly rustle the enforcer within, and the spare syncopation of “It Won’t Happen” pushes Gates to get gymnastic with his rhyme schemes. When he catches the beat in his upper register, you can almost hear rust flaking off the gears.
He still loves the ladies too, and as soon as he gets to it with a down-low lover via a reverently recycled T-Pain hook on early highlight “Lil Yea,” Gates’ taste for cooed held notes and boy-band arcs shines. Obviously, his shirt comes off. But as with “Yonce Freestyle”—which squanders a Sexyy Red feature that should’ve been a slam dunk—the jubilation is hollow, like the “woo-hoo!” you let out to save face after your friends catch you checking your email at the club.
The peace Gates references throughout The Ceremony is hard-won, but it's also such that you’re not inclined to disturb it. There’s a palpable urge to slip out of the room when he lets you in on a tender moment with his partner, not hang around for another song. Gates hasn’t exactly been lost in the muck of the corporate rap game, but as he focuses on other pursuits, the raw mud he fashioned into some of his greatest music is hardening into something far less ductile.
