Rick Ross and Young Jeezy, the two rappers who recently got in a fight at the BET Hip Hop Awards, are gangster rappers of very different stripes. Ross, as pretty much everyone who pays attention to these things now knows, broke the myth of the authentic rapper: When 50 Cent aired him out as a former correctional officer, it merely freed Ross up to tell larger, more grandiose stories about a worldwide drug operation that he clearly wasn't running. Now, according to sources like Hot 97's Peter Rosenberg, Ross is the most important rapper making music today.
Jeezy is the more old-line model of gangster rapper, so much so that Jay-Z, on his song "A Star is Born", credited him and his crew with "reminding me of us in early '92." Unfortunately for Jeezy, that kind of authenticity-based gangster rap is less popular than ever. Since 2006's The Inspiration, he's struggled to appeal to a mainstream audience without help from marquee names like Usher and Kanye West.
If Jeezy represents a part of the gangster-rap spectrum that's fallen off in recent years, his cohort and label signee Freddie Gibbs is making music that skews even closer to pop radio obsolescence. The people who control pop radio have, in large part, moved on. Thankfully, a rapper like Gibbs could give a shit about all that. With his new mixtape Baby Face Killa, Gibbs has perfected the formula that has made him a blog favorite for the past few years.
This type of gangster rap has become a formalized subgenre, as familiar and rigidly structured as a mob movie. There are tropes that simply must be included, beats that must be hit. Here, instead of the montage of the rise, the femme fatale, the deal gone wrong, the traitor in our midst, there are simpler traditions: the song about weed, the song about money, clothes and hoes, the gang song. On Baby Face Killa, all are executed to perfection.
Let's start with the song about money, clothes, and hoes, which is called "Money, Clothes, Hoes (MCH)", the second-most generic track name of all time, after "Gangsta Shit". But with claims lobbied like "gangster of the year, got that like four times in a row" over swirling keys and an addictive, chant-along chorus, the song title is besides the point. "My Nigga", is the gang song, one of many (possibly subconscious) tributes to classic 90s rap. It sounds like a great, unearthed Outlawz track, on which Freddie channels Tupac like no one else can. Producers Cookin' Soul summon an automobile clatter as Freddie bellows that "we all sinners, may God save us," extending his vowels like the late Mr. Shakur.
Tupac isn't the only legend given his due on the tape. Z-Ro, a rap demigod in his own right, does a more-than-passable imitation of Nate Dogg on the fantastic "Boxframe Cadillac ('83 Deville Mix)". "Even if it's raining, I'ma still drop the top," he sings. "That's some of the silly shit niggas do when they at the top." Freddie himself seems to want this tape to be seen as a direct descendant of the classics. "Walk in Wit the M.O." builds off of LL Cool J's "Around the Way Girl" and "Kush Cloud", the weed song that fittingly features Krayzie Bone, has a direct allusion to "Thug Luv".
But Baby Face Killa isn't some artifact dug up from the past. "Kush Cloud" also features an effective turn from youngster Spaceghostpurrp, and album standout "Bout It Bout It" wouldn't work half so well without the syrupy flow of the hard-charging Houstonite Kirko Bangz. Curren$y lends a verse to the fitting sequel to "Scottie Pippen", the flow-seminar "Tell a Friend", on which both rappers show off their agility, Gibbs flicking syllables around like marbles, Curren$y stuffing extra words in as if the beat had bottomless pockets. I often compare Gibbs to Curren$y in that the two are so consistent that, when weighing whether or not to listen to their projects, you're best served investigating the merit of producers and guest spots present. These two guys just don't screw up, and when those two factors are together, they always come up gold.
But Gibbs, though he can't carry an entire 18-track tape by himself (flow too regulated and relatively unmelodic) has no trouble bearing the weight of individual songs. He holds nothing back on the paranoia prima beat of "Still Livin'", saying that he's "still living like a jack boy, got your family wrapped up in tape, I'm 'bout that sack, boy." Meanwhile, on "The Hard", we get yet another heartless, unglamorous portrait of what a street dealer's life is like. That's what you're going to get from Freddie Gibbs. There's no excess; the fat's all stripped away and any kind of celebration is a form of catharsis, that beer that you need after a long day after work instead of a gratuitous 10 bottles of Ace of Spades. If the car isn't an '83 Caddie, we just imagine that it is. Fuck a defunct Maybach.
I'm happy that Rick Ross happened. Besides the fact that Ross is a great rapper in his own right, authenticity was always a bad joke and a particularly ugly thing to care about when questionable rappers were trading on "realness" to get publicity that they wouldn't have gotten if they were kids from the burbs spitting one syllable words over huge trap beats. But there should never be a monopoly or monarchy in rap-- too much of anything is always a bad thing. And with Baby Face Killa, Freddie Gibbs restores some of the balance, not because of any perceived authenticity or realness, but because he's very, very good at performing within a genre that will soon be extinct or will otherwise evolve into something unrecognizable.
