The unifying thread in Gucci Mane’s music since being released from prison this past May after serving nearly three years for drug and gun charges can be summed up in one word: readjustment. His stunning physical transformation—which included losing 75 pounds and the emergence of an enviable six-pack, the results of a healthier drug-free lifestyle—also impacted Gucci’s rapping itself. Aside from the usual sort of rust that needed to be shaken off, his dramatic weight loss affected his delivery in other tangible ways (which only stoked the fires of the clone conspiracy theories): the new Gucci was less congested, less slurred, and less guttural.
July’s Everybody Looking felt like an exploratory mission, as if he was unfamiliar with his own voice and testing out his new physical presence for size. Three months later, Woptober followed, which found the prolific Atlanta rapper increasing his familiarity with his vocal register, his rapping tighter and more assured. On The Return of East Atlanta Santa, his final release of 2016, Gucci has caught up with his new normal, sounding fully acclimatized to the new version of himself.
No longer is he searching for his footing: on opener “St. Brick Intro” he immediately slips in the pocket of Zaytoven’s funhouse minor-key rework of “Jingle Bells” and paints himself as the trap Kris Kringle: “Middle of the winter, I pull up in a vert / It’s the middle of December, she pulled up in a skirt/ Santa Claus of the hood, I pull up with the work / They call me East Atlanta Santa, run up on me, get murked.” Irreverent and silly as hell, the only thing that might prevent it from joining the pantheon of unconventional Christmas bangers is the slightness that comes with acting as an album’s welcome mat.
The holiday cheer extends no further, but the album’s remaining twelve tracks benefit from similarly locked-in performances. Whereas Everybody Looking and Woptober mirrored Gucci’s new lifestyle in content as well as form—he opened Everybody Looking by introducing himself as a “recovering drug addict”—here it is reflected in the clarity of his performance. The allusions to cleaner living are mostly oblique. “Last Time” features Travis Scott in support mode—which also happens to be his best mode—and preaches conscientiousness in recreational drug use. It contains some of the few direct references to Gucci’s erratic last decade: “See I’m an ex-X popper and online shopper / Niggas thought I was a clone, they heard me speak proper.” The other nod to his self-destructive past arrives in the chorus of “I Can’t,” one of the stickiest in his post-prison output: “You can talk about homicides, but I can’t.”
Gucci himself remains as magnetic as ever. He isn’t overwhelmed when Drake shows up to pull double duty on “Both,” lending his voice to the song's chorus as well as contributing a verse of his own. It’s more successful than the last time the two linked up—“Back on Road” off Everybody Looking—on which a phoned-in Drake hook added little. Gucci’s also still capable of rattling off deceptively poetic turns of phrases like “Now my watch so fucking bright it look like sunlight in the night,” as heard on the Mike WiLL Made-It-produced standout “Nonchalant.” On the same song he raps “In a whip so new, valet scared to park it,” an example of his sense of humor, which doesn't always get enough credit. The Return of East Atlanta Santa leans on this lighter, more playful side of Gucci’s personality, proving along the way that back to business doesn’t have to mean an absence of fun.
