"No Hands" is the title of Waka Flocka Flame's biggest crossover hit, but it's also the A&R policy that allowed his debut, Flockaveli, to become the single most influential gangsta rap record of the new decade. Untouched by the executive meddling that often results in interminable delays and other clusterfucks when underground rappers transition to major labels, Flockaveli's "Hard in Da Paint" and "O Let's Do It" emphasized the elements that made the album work: Waka's all-hooks-and-ad-libs lyricism, the decimating bombast of Lex Luger's game-changing production, and an OCD-level commitment to unrepentant aggression not seen since the commercial peak of Ruff Ryders and No Limit.
Predictably, there are hands all over Flocka's sophomore album, Triple F Life: Friends, Fans & Family: Goon-rap knuckleheads Kebo Gotti and Uncle Murda are swapped out for bankable stars (Nicki Minaj, B.o.B, Drake), and the beats, while contributed by a range of Luger affiliates (Southside, 808 Mafia and Boi-1da), are airy, stroboscopic, and more likely to make Funkmaster Flex drop rants than bombs. This will be a problem for anyone who saw Flockaveli as an antidote for mainstream hip-hop becoming increasingly tailored to Euro clubs in both sound and couture.
Flocka's always struck me as a stylistic descendant of the Tunnel Banger MC, so it's fitting that Triple F makes a similar move to DMX between It's Dark and Hell Is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood: he exchanges the debut's antisocial charisma and grim ambience for something more amenable to pop stardom as defined by MTV. It's sonically bolder and brighter but also more personal and caricatured. The record is all crowd-pleasing gestures, and if there were still any question about whether a rapper named Waka Flocka Flame has any artistic self-awareness, it can end here.
I doubt many of us can identify with most of what's being expressed on Triple F, and that's exactly the point. While Flocka's obviously got personality to spare, on record he serves as more of an avatar, a means for projecting one's own id. (He tags himself as "Mr. Let It Go" at the end of his verse from "Round of Applause", and it's an easy thing to overlook, seeing as how he rhymes it with "let it go.") But pop music has always contained some element of wish fulfillment, and at its best, Triple F gives credence to the notion that the impulses that cause one to buy out the bar, beat some dude over his head with a bottle of Ciroc, and yell "SQUAAAD!!!" at the top of your lungs are contained within the same spectrum. Tracks like "Let Dem Guns Blam" and "Fist Pump" are essentially rap-metal without the guitars, not meant as storytelling or even acknowledgements of real life situations.
Triple F doesn't come off like an endorsement for these actions so much as a validation of them, and that confusion can cause Flocka to be unfairly viewed as a threat to more cerebral hip-hop rather than a complement to it. But even if Flocka will be the first to tell you he's an entertainer first and foremost, it's worth noting how much he's improved as a rapper. His evolution since Flockaveli has been subtle (at least to the extent that anything about him can be subtle) but undeniable, whether on his own awkwardly titled mixtapes or outshining the likes of French Montana and Gucci Mane on their split records. He doesn't go anywhere new lyrically on Triple F, but as an MC, he's gotten much better at doing Flocka things. His rapping is more animated and agile, and he can pull off double-time flows as convincingly as his three-words-per-bar yelp. He's gotten funnier, too. Take a couple of lines from Luger's funereal strip-club banger "Round of Applause": "That girl look like Halle Berry when I'm on them beans" is worth a chuckle, but when Flocka drops one of his better ad-libs in "ROLLIN!!!"? Comedy gold. Just like adding a nerdy volunteer of "YES!" to "Flocka, can you be my baby daddy?" or sarcastically explaining a pervasive if seemingly non sequitur ad-lib by reducing all manner of fraudulent thuggery to "that's so not squad" on "U Ain't Bout That Life".
But make no mistake, Triple F is not Flockaveli 2. It's very much a brazen pop-rap album and it falls victim to most of the same hazards we've come to expect from them. For one thing, it's frontloaded as hell: The first five proper tracks on Triple F are its best, you've already heard them all, and there isn't a "Grove St. Party" or "Live by the Gun" to balance things out later on. Instead, "Flex" and "Cash" prove to be every bit the late-album filler their titles indicate, and the latter shows Triple F's 2011 labor pains by being probably the most blatant "Racks" ripoff committed to tape.
As for the guest spots, this isn't a situation like Teflon Don, Rick Ross' post-cred victory lap, where hip-hop's biggest names all submitted to the ground rules of Planet Boss. On Triple F, it's less about chemistry than what these artists' appearances signify: Drake sounds relieved bragging about "throwin' every president 'cept for Nixon on your ass" without having to delve into the attendant psychodrama and ramifications on masculinity, but his guest verse on "Round of Applause" is one of his least distinctive as a result. Nicki Minaj acquits herself nicely enough on the mercenary but well-executed pop-rap trifle "Get Low", but passes up the opportunity to develop any sort of chemistry with Flocka. The same goes for "Candy Paint & Gold Teeth": The presence of Bun B and Ludacris all but assures it will end up like every other "southern hospitality" concept track they get asked to do rather than one tailored to Flocka's sensibilities.
With all that in mind, the title of Triple F can seem fairly ironic. Compared to Flockaveli, the presence of Flocka's friends and family is minimal, and most of it appears geared toward fans he doesn't have yet. That changes near the end with more contemplative "real talk" tracks like "Power of My Pen" and "Triple F Outro" acknowledging that while the past two years have been wildly successful for Waka Flocka Flame, you wouldn't wish much of what's happened to Joaquin Malphurs-- witnessing the murder of close friend and collaborator Slim Dunkin and the character assassination of his mother/manager, to name a few-- on anyone.
These tracks are unavoidably jarring, but no more than if they'd been interspersed between "Rooster in My Rari" and such. In typical Flocka fashion, he totally overdoes it in a way that's actually charming: Take away the drums and the compulsory ad-libs from "Triple F Outro" and its guitars could pass for the National. But even if he's not gonna become 2Pac or Scarface overnight, his stabs at gravitas connect for the same reasons "Hard in Da Paint" or "Round of Applause" do: It's blunt, transparent, and a total lack of artifice allows its intent and execution to align completely. Such is the case with Triple F on a macro scale: It's tough to imagine Waka repeating Flockaveli and somehow improving on it, but under the cloak of *Triple F'*s blatant crossover appeals, he slyly exceeds expectations by making a record better than it really needs to be.
