It isn't until the 20th and final song on Gucci Mane's third mixtape of the year, Trap God, that you run into a verse based around Gucci making car noises with his mouth. This may seem like an insignificant detail, but in Gucci terms, this marks a major evolutionary event. Facial tattoos notwithstanding, he's cautious and conservative when it comes to change, and it takes a few spins through Trap God before the differences between it and past records come into focus. But once they do, they cohere into a portrait of an artist in the midst of an aesthetic metamorphosis.
Gucci isn't prone to the kind of daring innovations that have made Kanye the rap-game Apple Inc., a market-dominating behemoth who drops a zeitgeist-altering product about once a year. He's more like a niche company that builds devices for hardcore gamers, and offers a larger selection of goods that differ from each other only incrementally, but which aim at satisfying the needs of a more specialist crowd.
And if anything, Gucci's been almost too consistently good at delivering. Ever since he first started getting attention on a national scale in 2009, during an especially prolific period where he put out eight LPs' worth of material in a 12-month span, he could be counted on to release albums, mixtapes, and guest verses at such a blinding rate and that so reliably hit all of the marks his audience has come to expect-- the car noises, the "s'Gucci" ad libs, the good-but-not-incredible lyrics peppered with the requisite number of punchlines-- that they tend to blur together.
Trap God has the lyrics and the punchline frequency (as well as the nasally congested, marble-mouthed flow), but it's short on the trademark Gucci vocal tics. In fact, sometimes it seems like there isn't enough Gucci in general-- not counting the brief "Intro", there are only four tracks that don't feature a guest rapper or singer, and three of them come in the back half of the record. And on some of the tracks he doesn't feel completely present, an effect that's exacerbated when he teams up with Meek Mill, Rick Ross, and his former protégé Waka Flocka Flame, three artists with outsize personalities who are currently at the top of their respective games. And the tracks where he comes out unambiguously on top-- including the handful alongside newly signed 1017 Brick Squad second-stringer Young Scooter-- the matchups feel lopsided.
The bright side is that Trap God's best songs are among the best in Gucci's catalog. Probably not coincidentally they also tend to be the ones where Gucci challenges himself the most. On the chiptune-inflected "Suckaz" (produced by Shawty Redd) and "Act Up" (produced by T-Pain, who also provides a killer vocal on the chorus), he sounds energetic and loose, hovering weightlessly over the beat. And when he squares off with Waka Flocka and internet mixtape sensation Kirko Bangz on the 808 Mafia-produced ode to no-strings-attached sex, "Fawk Something", he comes through with a remarkably profane verse that includes a brief and totally hilarious swing at impersonating a dancehall rapper.
When Gucci puts his mind to writing a chorus these days, he's coming up with better stuff than he ever has before. "Rolly Up" may have the most irritatingly unshakeable hook this side of Jibbs' "Chain Hang Low", but the back-to-back cuts "Money Habits" and "Crazy" are spiked with eccentrically catchy, off-key candy pop passages that suggest he might be the spiritual heir to Ol' Dirty Bastard at his karaoke-crooner best. Still, while Gucci Mane's recently been stuck in a particularly enjoyable rut, a rut is still a rut. It's good to see him start to pull himself out of it, even if it's slow going, inch by inch.
