LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS MAN IS FOR THE BIRDS!

Smack smack, bitch! HD's last couple projects was aight but a li'l generic, gave me some real Oakland mixtape rappers circa now is the new New York mixtape rappers circa 1998 type heebie jeebz. Chuuuch. Ain't gonna front like I listened to Pianos & 808s in its entirety; let's be real, that title is a little too earnest for its own good, you'd think he'd be on the cover sitting at a grand piano staring at his hands looking real contemplative and shit, black & white photography and whatever w/ some fuckin Chico DeBarge and Carl Thomas collabs.

This "Chicken Nuggets" tho, I fuck with it. Really I'm an easy mark when it comes to any food-related raps. I could even stomach :) that novelty album MF DOOM made when he was at his most hipster gassed up. And chicken nuggets? Yo, I eat those! So I'm all over this shit like a healthy slather of BBQ sauce on some chix nugz. Lest you think HD was dollar-menu rappin, he spells it out for you that this is a metaphor for something more illicit than breaded poultry: I ain't talkin bout no chicken nuggets ;) ;) ;). I say...what a rogue!

All this chicken talk takes me back to the days when I was working at the box factory, coming home late nights and copping some wings and fries from the fellas at Crown Fried, then slidin over to the Moroccan bodega to cop some Coors tallboys to help me better neglect my BM. Chuuuch! Ay, speakin of chicken talk, Lil Blood and 12 Gauge Shotie got a mixtape called Chicken Talk, thus bearing out my prediction that Guccistalgia is nigh. As with most Lil Blood projects, there is one good song. Peace!!!

RAP WILL EAT ITSELF (OR: TO SERVE GUCCI MANE)

No Limit nostalgia may have reached its fever pitch with Usher and Young Thug's Billboard-charting paean to the golden age of The Tank. Time to move on. Today's accelerated culture is ripe for an outbreak of Gucci Mane nostalgia. If "Swing My Door" is any indication, it's only a matter of time before young rappers, no longer content to merely run with his style, sink their talons into the themes, titles, and ad libs of his back catalog.

No Limit and Cash Money nostalgia consisted mainly of millenials reaching out toward a faded era of their youth. That the artists and music were accessories rather than actors is obvious if one remembers that people still don't give a shit about what Turk is doing. Gucci is as wanted and desired as he's ever been.

What fuels the nostalgia? Retrospective appreciation for his 2008 and 2009 hot streak? Anxiety that the drug-addled pudgeball we all loved is irrevocably changed? Or is it the persistent suspicion that the original model Radric Davis was murdered and cloned by the Bilderberg Group? Soon, perhaps, our nostalgia for the Original Gucci Mane will be all that remains—assuming, of course, they leave our memories unaltered. Hang on to your tinfoil snapbacks, folks.

Nostalgia trip #2: In the song's latter half, a bunch of MPA Weed Carriers trade verses like they're taking it back to the leather-man era. Rap: the only context where finishing each other's sentences isn't totally lame.

REBELS OF THE NEON GUCCI

On the considerable chance that any producers close to GUCCI MANE read this blog, would you make sure to submit Huang Shu-Jun's theme from Rebels Of The Neon God for his appraisal?  The simplistic bass line demands the marblemouthed caress of one of Big Guwop's skreet-level noir raps.

Alls I want in return is a drop from DJ DRAMA, screaming, "AS A FORMER RAP BLOGGER, I RECOGNIZE THE YOUNG SHOOTERS IN THIS GAME!  RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA HAS THAT JUICE MY SELDOM UPDATED XXL BLOG LACKED!  MATTER FACT, LET'S FORGET MY BLOG ENTIRELY!  TRULY A MISGUIDED VENTURE!  DAMAGING TO MY BRAND!  RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA, DON'T FORGET THE BLOGSPOT DOT COM!"

LET'S HEAR IT FOR YA BOY: A CELEBRATION OF 26 POSTS!

26 inches and the rims look like pickle juice

Now I know what most of y'all thinkin: "26 posts in one year ain't shit!  Go get ya fuckin shinebox and your sack of nickels."  But we came up in the '90s, boy, we got trophies just for participating in lice inspections.  No milestone, however mediocre, shall pass unacknowledged.

I thought they was overreacting puttin me on Ritalin for zonin out in class (I was just thinkin bout the Striptease VHS cover!), but my sporadic posting over the course of three years seems to confirm the suspicion.  Regardless, this post is dedicated to all the teachers who told me I'd never exceed 25 posts in a calendar year.  Take a look at me now, beeeyoch.  Enjoy this chestnut from Guccirace: wrestling aficionado, current inmate, and the last decade's most influential rapper.

THE HORRORCORE OF GUCCI MANE

Pimp C claimed Jeezy used to run around with a backpack and rolled-up pant leg on his Hot 107.9 rant, but what was Gucci doing at the time?  If his rather sizable horrorcore catalog is any indication, he might have been one of the few people fuckin with the Flatlinerz.



He already did a "Vampire" with Trina, but it doesn't hold a candle to the "Monster Mash" goofiness of this new version.  Backed by a Mustard beat that would kill at a New Age yoga retreat,  Gucci croons about an Elvira-type broad he met in the graveyard.  Hanging out in graveyards is always a good look.  Gucci's song concepts always demonstrated his knack for the surreal and absurd, but "Vampire" really foregrounds the campiness of his work.  Gucci gonna be a gay icon soon.

What else?  There's the album cover where he's Photoshopped onto Freddy Krueger's body and the grindhouse blood-and-bondage aesthetic of the "Crazy" video.  Then there's "Poltergeist" with Talib Kweli(!) and "Haunted House" and "Horror Flick" and "Trick Or Treat" and "Feed Me."  Someone get this man a Fangoria subscription!

RADRIC DAVIS #65556019
TERRE HAUTE USP
PO BOX 33
TERRE HAUTE INDIANA 47808

BEFORE THE BANKROLLS: YUNGER MONEY FRESH

As much as I liked Bankroll Fresh's Life Of A Hotboy tape, it was little more than a workmanlike exercise in highly competent rapping.  Bankroll (nee Yung Fresh) got skills, but IDK if he has the personality to jump from good to great.  No one's expecting him to have the same charisma of Gucci, but on this 2013 Zaytoven jawn he gets killed on his own shit by Rocko channeling Plies.  The late, flamboyantly eye-patched Doe B also gets in on the action.  Side note: what are the odds that Doe B got shot by another eye-patched dude?  Eye for an eye for real; that's some Spy vs. Spy type beef.

This 2009 cut, again produced by Zay, finds Fresh rapping inna OJ Da Juiceman style.  It's always a good look to bite OJ, the most influential rapper of the past 10 years, but as a creative writing teacher might say, Bankroll, you need to put more of yourself in the work!

"Faces" has Yung Ralph and Fresh goin over yet another vintage Zay beat, with Gucci in the late So Icey Era.  Hearing the exuberance in Gucci's voice makes me miss 2008, before his work took a paranoid turn.  Someone gotta divide Gucci's shit into different eras cause he's on some Picasso shit like that.  Right now he sounds like he's rappin thru a down comforter after sleeping off five gravy-boats of Actavis.  He peeks thru the blinds lookin for thieves in the night, back aching cause he fell asleep on a 40 cal.  Gucci's Loner Period or his Grey Era?

DEFLATING THE GUCCI MANE MARKET

I get that GUCCI is tryin to remind the fickle rap public of his existence as he sits in the clink catching up on Nora Roberts novels, but there's something to be said for leaving the public wanting more.  Whether it was intentional or not, BOOSIE's silence behind bars created huge anticipation for Life After Deathrow.  Fans missed him.

Even his biggest fans won't say that about GUCCI.  By now his prolific output behind bars is an in-joke along the lines of 2PAC's bewildering beyond-the-grave activity.  It seems he's got that Richard Nixon gene where he's so obsessed with leaving a legacy he documents his every ad-lib.  That backfired on Prezzy Big Dick, and it seems to be having a similar effect on GUWOP.  The brevity of Views From Zone 6 is a relief from the bloated heft of some recent mixtapes, but its slapped-together feel betrays its origins.  For an eight song EP, there are a staggering number of features: QUAVO, LIL REESE, 2 CHAINZ, PEEWEE LONGWAY, LIL B, etc.  Also present are CHIEF KEEF and ANDY MILONAKIS, the worst rap combo since KANYE and JOHN MAYER.

Clearly the features were a product of necessity, but the collaborations lack chemistry in consequence.  GUCCI should tell his people to cool it with the vault clearing and focus on himself, maybe take up meditation or explore the possibilities of stick 'n' poke.  The only real highlight here is the mesmerizing "Bitter," featuring YOUNG THUG and YUNG GLEESH, a welcome entry in his ongoing Word Series.

GUCCI BE REVELATIN, WRITIN IN HIS DIARY LIKE PETEY PABLO

 

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!  Sup bitches.  Anyway, let's cut to the quick.  First of all, what's up wit alll da songs about "young niggas" these days?  Is old rappers really feelin that old and out of touch that they gotta write paeans to their young fans?  Shit is mad homo imo.

But yo, 4real, I was not expecting anything diaristic about Diary Of A Trap God.  Thought it was just  a catchy name GUCCI conconcted to keep da Trap God series movin, yamean?  But there are a few revealing moments on the mixtape, in particular the track entitled "Show A Young Nigga."  Besides showin love to his youthful harem, he also touches on some real shit dat the rap public been pondering as of late.  First off, he touches on da beef between him and JEEZY and T.I.  The beef wit JEEZY been broiling for years, but he gives a little new insight into the situation.  "I heard Tip and Jeezy say that they don't like me," GUWOP raps.  So all dis beef is cause he thinks these cats don't like him?  That some grade school shit, GUCCI.  Didn't know he was that sensitive.  Who cares what other ppl think of u?

Then he say, "They say I'm bipolar but my diamonds they sure live."  Now there been some chirpin bout GUCCI bein bipolar, but there ain't been no proof cause none of these rap bloggers been readin the DSM-IV, and I know they ain't wilin on that DSM-V tip.  This armchair psychologizin got some legs when GUCCI had his infamous Twitter meltdown a while back.  But yo, dis the first time he actually address this shit in song and adds credence to the idea that it was all a publicity stunt, or more accurately, a private-becomes-publicity stunt.

Is GUCCI bipolar?  Does this explain his erratic behavior?  Will GUCCI do for mental illness what FRANK OCEAN did for gayness?  Or will it all get swept under the rug like so much mental illness in aMURIKKKA?  I dunno yo, i just be sittin back and observing shit like my mane Alexis de Tocqueville.  Chuuuuuuuuuuuuch!

DID MIGOS MAKE THE MOST PAUSEWORTHY SONG IN THE HISTORY OF NO HOMO?

 

So yo, we all know rap lyrics can be mad gay, and I ain't just talkin bout later era COMMON.  Gay lyrics is such a hallmark of the genre that the phrase "no homo" was invented so DIPSET could continue saying gay things without being dismissed as gaylords or makin us feel uncomfortable with our sexuality.  And all that talk bout "my partner" from cats like WAKA FLOCKA and T.I. sounds mad Fire Island.

But dis MIGOS song wit GUCCI MANE, "Dennis Rodman," is maybe da weirdest entry into hip-hop's overlooked but extensive history of gayness.  It's all in good fun, too; dey even clarify "she changed her hair again / no she no drag queen."  But really, Dennis Rodman?  Yo, if someone compared my chick to Dennis Rodman I'd have em lookin like Rudy Tomjanovich.

Thing is, I seen way way better looking drag queens than Dennis Rodman.  Qualifying it by saying, "she no drag queen" is kinda a dis to drag queens.  So what's it gonna be?  Is GUCCI and MIGOS gonna set off beef with BIG FREEDIA?  I hope so, cause rap battles is lackin spice these days.  This shit could be the best rap battle since LIL B/JOE BUDDEN.  Wake up, labelheads, this could save hip-hop.  I ain't even want a cut of the $$$ from the inevitable pay-per-view battle, cause I'm not in this game for the money -- I'm in it for the advancement of hip-hop!

DOES GUCCI MANE NEED HIS REQUISITE 8 HOURS OF SLEEP A NIGHT OR DOES HE JUST NEED TO SNORT BLOW IN THE STUDIO?

Sup to all the headshakers and anonymous cretins.  We finna do this once again again.  So yo, like many a rap listener, I got swept up by the GUCCI MANE frenzy of '09.  My dude was killin it with the mixtapes - BURRPRINT 3, GUCCI SOSA, COLD WAR SERIES.  Like, he was goin off to the fullest!  Then he got locked up and checked into a mental health clinic and got a scoop of Ben & Jerry's tattooed on his cheek and kinda dropped off da rap map.

But never fear!  GUCCI dun returned with some fly shit!  TRAP GOD marks the return of that outlandish, impish GUCCI character we all love so much.  But am I da only one who notices the weariness in GUCCI's voice?  Maybe it's a symptom of age - a wiser, more contemplative GUCCI.  Or perhaps he's reluctantly accepted the repetition inherent to an established rap persona; that he is doomed to rap about bezels and trapping and fly bitches in a prison of his own making.  You can hear a similar abatement of aggression in RAEKWON's voice, another rapper who painted himself into a cocaine corner after CUBAN LINX.  Or I dunno maybe he was just RICK JAMES level coked up back in those halcyon '08/'09 days.