Gucci Mane takes the restrictions of prison sentences as a challenge. He smuggles out music like contraband. It has become less about whether or not he’ll be able to produce while incarcerated and more about just how much music he can muster. Since his conviction on felony weapons charges in 2013, he’s supplied digital albums and mixtapes at a rate that’d make Lil B blush, all while serving a sentence that won't see him released until early 2017. At times, his release schedule feels like a personal affront to the penal system, a boast that his now historically prolific output cannot be stifled, not even by a cell. In an effort to keep up this charade, though, the quality of his mush-mouthed oeuvre has been erratic at best and numbing at worst.
It seems during this current stint, his longest bid behind bars as a rapper and maybe the first where his relevance has been threatened, Gucci is releasing music more aimlessly than ever. Projects are compiled of old throwaways from long-forgotten hard drives. Mixtapes arrive one after the next or in packs with no consideration for consumer consumption. There is often little to no method to his madness. He releases new projects en masse simply for the sake of it. These days, it’s less about the music itself and more about how he rolls it out. But he’s been playing a game of diminishing returns: the more music a mercurial Gucci releases, the less people seem to check for it.
When they do, it’s because of the stunt itself. February produced an EP entitled Views From Zone 6, an obvious play on the title of Drake’s forthcoming album, which featured eyebrow-raising features from Andy Milonakis and the Based God. In March, he released Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Dessert, three albums and an EP which all did little to whet the appetite, but still received a sizable amount of coverage simply because of the grandness (and absurdity) of the gesture. On his last mixtape, Trap House 5 (The Final Chapter), he squandered nearly a dozen beats from Zaytoven only a few months removed from producing Future’s scintillating Beast Mode tape. In an effort to preserve his image as a mixtape workhorse, Gucci is slowly becoming a caricature.
The general consensus surrounding Gucci Mane has always been that he’s limited by his inconsistency, a sentiment that resonates even louder now. On the title track from his newest mixtape, King Gucci, he hears those murmurs echoing: "Some people say Guwop ain’t Gucci/ They say Bricksquad ain’t So Icy…/ What?!" It’s a shot at any suggestion that he’s self-saturated to the point of being washed up or that he’s become a parody of his former self. There’s more disbelief in his voice than menace, as if to render the notion unthinkable. To that end, King Gucci feels like an attempt to reaffirm Gucci’s identity and re-establish his place in trap’s mixtape hierarchy with a measured dose of what he built his trap house on: a wild mixture of slurry phonetic gaffes, lumbering wordplay, and sly wit over production from the subgenre’s marquee names.
When Gucci Mane is at his muddled best, his words mash together and his phrases bury ledes in favor of ancillary details so colorful they pique one’s interest. He doesn’t reach Peak Gucci on King Gucci, but there are flashes of it everywhere ("Cash smell like cocaina/ Got Febreze for all my cheese" on "Still Selling Dope"; the combo of "My pops wasn’t ‘round but least he gave me good looks" and "Tattoos on my face card ‘cause I don’t want no job" on "I’m Too Much"). You still have to parse through his sometimes clumsy phrasing and garbled speech, but the flows are trickier here and the wordplay niftier than on a lot of his other recent releases. The woozy Tarentino production on the title track allows Gucci enough space to stretch and mash vowel sounds like putty. On "Real Dope Boy" he again implies a return to form: "I’m back making old school trap boy music." The tape’s highlight is the Chief Keef-produced "Smart Mouth", which pairs the GBE rapper/producer’s abstract synth work with some of Gucci’s more technical rapping.
One underrated truth about Gucci is that he is an even better A&R than he is an artist, and while Gucci the Great Rapper can go dormant without warning, Gucci the A&R is one of the only constants in Atlanta’s ever-changing, burgeoning underground. King Gucci’s strongest argument for his staying power, maybe unknowingly, are the names lining its credits: those he helped nurture or nudge or promote throughout his illustrious run. DJs Scream and Drama, PeeWee Longway, Migos, Zaytoven, Metro Boomin, Tarentino, and TM88 have all built respectable careers with Gucci’s help and their presence here feels like another boast. King Gucci is a valiant but limited attempt to re-establish Gucci Mane’s foothold on trap from behind bars with old tropes and familiar faces.
