Baton Rouge rapper Kevin Gates is relentless, both in style and in work ethic. He’s released his latest mixtape, Murder For Hire 2, only four months after his exceptional major label debut, Islah, which is quietly one of the best-selling rap albums of the year thus far, and clearly among the best-made ones. Gates took a sideways route to commercial success, amassing a devoted cult following through his plainspoken and unflinchingly honest raps and a prickly online presence that’s just as confounding. “You know I got a lot of record labels tryin' to sign me / They say if I'm a risk, it's detrimental to the profit,” he rapped on Murder For Hire closer “Khaza.” But his antics haven’t even moderately budged the bottom line, and this sequel is further evidence of a winning formula: stay true to yourself and deliver a reliable product.
Murder For Hire 2 serves as both a true followup to its predecessor and an Islah epilogue. There are lots of similar flourishes to the latter—haunting piano keys, dips into gravelly singsong, and some dynamic cadences—but it models the former’s loose structure, playing like a compilation of B-sides or outtakes from the Islah sessions. Even so, it’s quite a formidable collection of records with some of the rapper’s most forceful and vital flows. Over time, Gates has slowly grown as comfortable in his stylistic tendencies as he is in his own skin; he knows exactly what a good Kevin Gates song sounds like and the specific set of ingredients that go into making one. His acute eye for detail is as effective reliving addiction (“Great Example”) as it is recounting old gun fights.
“Off Da Meter” finds Gates at his most complex, measuring his rising fame against the sadness set upon him by a grief-stricken life (In the hook, he sings, “Getting 50 Gs a feature, my show price is going up / Hard to deal with this depression lately I've been throwing up” before later delivering the equally complicated appraisal: “God love his children, he's awesome / He sent me an angel who's flawless / Got shot in my mouth in '05 / Knocked out my teeth, it was awful”). Kevin Gates is often best playing the fragile thug, letting his shortcomings manifest as bite-sized ugly truths in passing, and on MFH2 he plays up this dichotomy. “The Prayer,” aptly produced by the Villains, revisits facing 25-to-life as a 25-year-old hustler, chastising the futility of “internet beef” in the process. On “Lil Nigga,” a song devoted to camaraderie, he professes his affection for those in his inner circle, then, within seconds, he tracks down and nabs the man that shot him, dispensing his own brand of street justice. He tightropes the divide between hardcore goon and thoughtful companion better than any of his peers, even making the gap indistinguishable at times. "Believe in Me" is vintage Kevin Gates: raw to the point of being tender and exposed.
The hooks aren't quite as catchy or well-written on Murder For Hire 2 as they have been in recent months, and he phones it in on "Fuck It," which repurposes OT Genasis' "Cut It" into a rather bland and affectless replica, but overall the tape is a welcome addition to the Gates canon. It works well as a snack-sized accompaniment to the bigger prize. Just because Gates is only a few months removed from the biggest success of his career doesn’t mean there’s even the slightest chance that he plans on slowing down. “Moving on, better thoughts, cleaner weed, cleaner living / Kitchen bags at the cleaners, even made a cleaner killing,” he raps on “Showin' Up,” continuing to push onward and upward, carrying his momentum forward. He’s an unstoppable force with an indomitable will, and he’s on the verge of becoming rap’s brightest sleeper star.
