A
Consumer Guide to Gucci Mane: Part 1
From The
Trap House and Back (2005-2007)
I want to qualify that
the following are assigned grades only as Gucci Mane releases, not as albums or
as works of art – which is not to say they aren’t all works of art
individually, but that they all have places within Gucci’s singular universe,
some of them more significant places than others. The purpose of this project
is to brief benighted readers on which of Gucci’s many, many releases they
should pursue or spend time. So while Back
To The Trap House may not rank among Big Guwop’s “best” efforts, it is more
“essential” to the casual listener than, for example, Ice Attack, which is rich with great songs that had already
appeared on previous tapes and records, thus “inessential,” and they get the
same grade.
Trap House (24 May 2005)
“So Icy,” totem that it
is, might as well be re-titled “So Thrifty.” If Gucci, like Jeezy, actually
came into the game a millionaire, he doesn’t sound like it on his commercial
debut, where he spends as much time sketching a drug-dealing persona as he does
crafting Magic City bangers. The latter category of “songs” tends to work
better, as would become a trend for the rapper: “Go Head” and “That’s All” are
catchy as shit, although “Booty Shorts” might be the worst track ever recorded
by a Georgia rapper, inside or outside the Perimeter. The personal sketches are
honest and gritty, and they supply the tropes expected from an album that
purports to be about trapping, with a bonus evocation of a muggy Atlanta street
corner, but such naturalism is Trap House’s
downfall – a 25-year-old dope-whipper from Zone 6 calling himself “Gucci Mane”
had better either a) be rich enough to afford Gucci or b) be good enough at pretending
he can, which would require him to sound like he was actually good at selling
drugs. Instead, he forgoes the stories he would later learn to tell for the quotidian
banalities of “Lawnmower Man” and “Pyrex Pot.” Despite its shortcomings,
there’s a cuteness to the record that, after the fury of Chicken Talk, Gucci could never replicate. A Portrait of the Lion
as a Yung Mane. B
Chicken Talk (2006)
The Exile On Main Street of trap-rap mixtapes, it’s also the Elvis Presley – fluid, propulsive, wild
messy, and loaded front to back with the classics that would sneak their way
onto inferior mixtapes and albums for the next two years, it’s also ground zero
for all Atlanta hip-hop to follow. It seems now almost impossible that a talent
so prolific yet so spotty could, with his first free tape, churn work so
consistently brilliant and forward-looking out of the rumors and the beef and
the murder charges that defined Gucci Mane’s titanic mythology from the dawn of
his fame, but that mythology is the key to Chicken
Talk. Never again would Gucci engage with his image so directly, especially
not on a two-hour free mixtape, and never again so honestly. This is the truest extant document of a crucial moment in
the city’s trap history only because it sounds true – the beats and the rhymes
are within Gucci’s means. They’re also hard as hell. Where Trap House captured the tedium of low-level dealing, this one’s
rife with the violent and dangerous excitement the streets provide to a yung
mane who can just freshly afford a 745 with a Gucci interior, for whom hip-hop
poses a physical threat and sounds correspondingly hazardous. As a bougie white
boy who lived OTP at the time of release, it’s my cleanest lookingglass into
the tempest of Zone 6. As such I would have qualms about enjoying the danger
without the fear, like I would riding a rollercoaster made of human bones, but
like riding a real rollercoaster, I know how it ends, and there’s glee in the
grit. A+
Hard To Kill (10
October 2006)
Producer Zaytoven’s first
sustained success is interrupted by two non-Zay bangers: “Go Head” and “Freaky
Gurl,” no less, which means that the strength of Gucci Mane’s best club record
belongs as much to Radric Davis as anybody. The beats work in tandem with the
idiosyncratically hedonistic rhymes to cast a purple and black cartoon Atlanta
nightscape that’s a perfect complement to Chicken
Talk’s sweaty streets and uncut grass. He’s still slanging, of course – the
songs here are the reward, if you can overlook the moral dilemma at the heart
of such a conceit. Nearly every one makes it easy. A-
Bird Flu (Southern Slang) (2007)
Contents: 25 “tracks,” five
of them hot; two of those inferior remixes, another two bifurcated Chicken Talk oldies. That leaves just one
reason to track down and download this forgotten assemblage of early-Gucci
potpourri: “I’m A J”’s flip-phone weed-crunk, a rare comic breather and ad-lib
showcase for The Venerable Lil Jon from which Gucci abstains for a full two
minutes. The Hot 107 T.I. apology comes early, and it’s the only break from the
seamless transitions between tracks that would be appealing if the individual
cuts were substantially distinct not to require distinct beginnings and
endings, or if, conceptually, the interminable monolith cut from their
homogeneity had any of the song-like consistency of its groove. Who needs
Philip Glass? B-
Ice Attack (2007)
Not the classic he
proclaims it, but it’s got the hitz – “Pillz,” “Alligators,” “Freaky Girl,”
“Stupid.” In other words, it’s the overstuffed best-of Hard To Kill and Chicken Talk
render superfluous. Find its predecessors and skip it if you can. B
Ice Attack: Part 2 (2007)
Part 1 was no classic,
but it had the boon of a handful of older bangers that made the whole
worthwhile if you happened not to be in Underground Atlanta circa Chicken Talk and Hard To Kill. Here, though, only “Raining Money,” which hints at an
ice-funk upon which an alternate-universe Gucci might have elaborated, and its
sax-driven follow-up, “Interlude,” achieve the sublime surprise of the
aforementioned full-lengths’ many fine moments. Trap Moses Zaytoven admirably
pursues a, how you say, sound, to the ends of monotony and murk, attributes he
would eventually abandon for the dynamism of the super-hitmaker. As his
producer guns for continuity, Gucci slacks lyrically, leaving us with a mess
that’s nowhere near as gripping as earlier messes, and never as beguiling. C+
No Pad, No Pencil (2007)
A more Gucci-centric “I’m
A J” doesn’t make the whole less lackluster, nor does “My Kitchen’s” refrain
of “Gucci do the dishes.” If you doubted
that La Flare benefits from the pad and the pencil, the holes in his palms are palpable
on this half-baked free-form exercise. Gucci’s always been primarily a writer,
so the idea here is to flaunt his prosodic prowess, which is comparatively
limited, and the seven “exclusive” freestyles render the fact imminently
glaring. The beats sound cheap and samey, and I challenge those who would
deride Gucci’s entire catalogue as such to compare the originals of “Streets on
Lock” and “Freaky Girl” with their totally uncalled for remixes scattered among
the basura. The man’s a giant, but this ain’t shit. D
Guapaholics (with Shawty Lo) (2007)
If Gucci and Jeezy are
the Stones and Beatles of trap music, Shawty Lo’s, like, the Zombies. I’m
file-sharing illiterate and don’t understand torrents, so I can’t get my hands
on this one, but Gucci tends to work well in collaboration, so I wager that
this is probably pretty strong. If you’re smarter than me, steal the file and
send that shit my way. N/A
Trap-A-Thon (11 Oct 2007)
While the Trap God
himself, icy fresh in Atlantic’s ivory towers, proclaimed this unauthorized and
largely overlooked cash-in by Big Cat extracanonical, an etic compiling hand
lends focus and concept to the maddeningly inconsistent deep space of his
early-period mixtape material. So of course “Freaky Girl” and “Pillz,” welcome
in any universal context, make their fourth appearance in the Gucci galaxy, and
thematically they’re light-years from home. Sonically, though, which signifies
as conceptually, they feel and smell like the rest of the album, equal parts
money and dope this time out. The corporately devised conceit is that dope is money – real money, money that can
afford to discourage you from buying the record, money that can afford such conspicuous
accouterments as aesthetic and persona and theme. Even as his erstwhile label
sheds his shirtless past, ’07 Gucci still lacks the nouveau-riche glitz of ’07
Kanye, so they give him the role of the dopeboy-turned-dopeman who can afford that
fishscale and that “Bling Bling Bling Bling” but not that Daft Punk sample. The
persona is becoming. The money-grubbers don’t want you to forget where he came
from, though: “Product” provides the narrative with the necessary ligature
between slanging and spending for those who know that it was the dope and the
pillz that blasted him into luxury’s orbit in the first place. “Soon as I
finish my ball, might hit the mall,” a younger Gucci muses at the stove. The
trap is boomin’, indeed. A-
Back To The Trap House (11 Dec
2007)
Major-label debuts at the
dawn of the Internet age of music discovery would still sound like mixtapes but
for the guap, which slots Gucci’s just a notch above such noncommercial
releases as Bird Flu. Remember: with
Gucci Mane, richer actually tends to mean better. Even so, the wealth is
thinner here: the beats are, putatively, pricier than those on Trap-A-Thon, but
the bling isn’t, and bling is everything. Part of this dilemma is thematic:
he’s roamed the streets, he’s hit the club, he’s been in the studio, now he’s
returned to the bando. But why? To cook it again, he explains, but the stove is
cool and the product’s weak. B-
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?? Stay posted for Part 2:
Mr. Perfect on Trial (2008-2009).
From Zone 6 To Duval (2008)
A
Consumer Guide to Gucci Mane: Part 2
Mr.
Perfect On Trial (2008-2009)
EA Sportscenter (2008)
With the exception of the
hook on “Sun Valley,” which is still the tape’s best track, there’s not a single
mention of the trapping that bogged down Gucci Mane’s early efforts on this manic
step up, which is intrinsically significant. Far from the most prestigious or
beloved of the ATLien’s touted mid-period work, the shift it marks is all that
matters – it’s roughly the Chicken Talk
of Gucci’s weird and sudden blow-up, and it’s refreshing in its own unique way,
like replacing crack with fishscale, as he does lyrically. The product’s still
clearly cheap – it’s a mixtape, not an album – but I can attest that it’s also
strong for reasons less trivial than its place in history. The freshness is
abetted by all new songs and lyrical motifs. No longer whipping dope or
pretending to, he’s now using his hard wit to fuck all his eleventh grade
teachers, not to mention your bitch, with money on the dresser to impress her
and show her he’s successful – rhymes more Latinate but no less forceful than
Pimp C’s “drive a Kompressor.” If Back To
The Traphouse is Sartoris, this
is The Sound and The Fury: the
precise point where & when shit gets weird, thus essential. Everything
after “King Gucci” is cheating, but the ride up is a tour de force. A
Gucci Sosa (17 Aug
2008)
There’s a chance that
Gucci Mane is an actual bad person – bad enough, maybe, that there’s no point
in rationalizing anymore and listening to his music, the majority of which is,
candidly, not that good either. Anybody undertaking the task of slogging
through his shits comes to an existential juncture at this realization – a
period of doubt, a challenge to his or her blind and probably misguided faith
in the Trap God. Right around getting to Gucci
Sosa, I had such a crisis. It was like bad medication, which is to say I
have no happy memories of it. DJ Scream,
who has probably the most annoying signature of all time, overshadows Zaytoven,
which still doesn’t explain why not a single hook on the tape actually does its
job. The content, meanwhile, is all ugly sex and money, which hits me bad in a
way that trapping never could. It’s plenty weird, but in the way Caligula was,
I guess. Worse, he buys his loafers and sneakers at the Mall of Gwinnett, when everyone
knows that real Gucci Men shop at Lenox. What the fuck, G? C-
Mr. Perfect (2008)
Not over the vocational
crisis that struck me at Gucci Sosa,
I took a break from Big Guwop for a week – my ears needed a break, I told
myself – before tackling these 32 fukkin tracks. They did nothing to fortify my
faith. Bet your ass not all of them are actually perfect, and with the possible
exception of “Sun Valley” (a repeat from EA
Sportscenter), none of them are. As always, the Zaytoven-produced numbers
triumph: “Cave Man,” for example, picks up the druggy surrealism where EA Sportscenter left it, and towers
above practically everything else here. But any 32-track project is
statistically likely to succeed at least once, and the successes here are so
minor and few that they fade into the winding tedium like drops of promethazine
in Sprite. The would-be gritty “Let’s Go To War” is virtually indistinguishable
from its vacuous successors, “Floss My Jewelery” and “Fat Ass,” and glib about
the presumptive realities of the streets Gucci abandoned for the studio. “Ms.
Pacman” appropriates classic G-Funk in the worst possible way. “None Stop
Rappin’ No Hook” with its title alone paints a picture of what it’s like to
listen to this worthless, forgettable drag. Trust me. I listened to the whole
fukkin thing. C+
Definition of A G (with Yo Gotti) (19 Aug
2008)
“Bricks,” “Ridiculous,”
“Call The Weedman,” “Get Lotz of Cash,” and “Mo Money” are (I think) the only
repeats on this Gangsta Grillz special, except for the line “Gucci do the
dishes” on the last of these, of which I’ll never tire. That’s a lot of
repeats. But Gucci is right in thinking they were good enough to appear more
than once, and they are scattered among a grand total of fourteen tracks –
considerably less daunting than Mr.
Perfect’s 32, most of the best of which are preserved here. Not much of a collaboration,
but worth seeking out for the tracks. Which, you know, you could just download
individually. B
The Movie (16 Sep
2008)
Less conceptual or
narrative than the title would suggest, Gucci Tarantino turns out another all-time
trap classic nonetheless. As busy sonically as EA Sportscenter, it’s considerably darker, floating along on a roaring
cold front of icy, bassy beats that lend it a menace that Gucci hasn’t achieved
since “745.” Meanwhile, the hooks are complex and – get this – melodic, as
Gucci hires support from Trey Songz and Gorilla Zoe to soften what could have
been the ugliness of his lyrics, which are virtually an exclusive treatise on
his money and occasionally his fame, both of which you can be sure he exploits.
Some may tire of the single-mindedness in his materialism; anybody paying
attention, though, can overlook it, because at least there’s none of the
violence that hindered his earlier work. After all, he’s always been more a
rudeboy than a badman, a talented rascal with every right to spend a check on
the pretty titties of Magic City if he fukkin wants to. The mixtape’s real
asset, though, is its album-like focus. For this, we thank the Trap God. A
Hood Classics (23 Sep
2008)
Like Ice Attack, it’s packed with the hitz – not all of them,
inevitably, and not arranged in any logical sort of order. So heavy on Trap House tracks it hurts, the chief
problem with any Gucci-authorized Gucci compilation is that determining what
actually qualifies the “classics” is a matter of personal taste. I’d recommend
making your own and skipping this one. Peep my list: 1. “Icy” 2. “Go Head” 3. “Street
Niggaz” 4. “Stupid” 5…. B
From Zone 6 To Duval (2008)
I was reading an
interview Gucci gave Complex in 2012, circa Trap
God, in which he called From Zone 6
To Duval “one of my hardest mixtapes ever.” That was the first mention of
the tape I’d seen, so I don’t know if it’s actually official or not. But the
Trap God’s word is scripture, so I gave it a listen. Because very little of the
material here appears anywhere else, it’s not, as Gucci attests in a throwaway
adlib, “Chicken Talk 2.” But Zone 6 is unique, and the difference
between it and some of Gucci’s more conventional works is immediately obvious:
Big Rankin’s Jacksonville beats. “Hot Damn” has some of the sparest production
I’ve heard Guwop rap over yet, and the triple threat of “Nickelodeon,” “We Got
Em” and “Pampers” has a weird Caribbean flavor. Lyrically, this is not much of
a step forward, except in the case of “Pussy Puller,” a brilliant song that
looks forward to the oversexed grossouts of Bird
Flu 2, and which makes its sole appearance here. Track this obscurity down
for that if for no other reason. B+
Bird Flu, Part 2 (1 Jan
2009)
No relation other than
titular to its mediocre predecessor, this one’s loaded beginning to end with
new material – a rarity among Gucci releases. The material itself is just as
refreshing: this is Gucci at his weirdest and grossest, and he maintains the
giant baby persona throughout the tape from the goofy beats to the obnoxious
ad-libs to the lyrics. “Gucci Mane is alien, from another galaxy,” he establishes
out the gate, and he’s prepared to back himself up. “I wear Pull-Ups,” he later
brags, presumably to catch the shit that normally just falls out of his ass. He’s
taking other precautions: “I took a Cialis and now I’m horn(e)y,” the
28-year-old admits. Therein lies the key to Part
2: he’s actively trying to get it up, crafting a persona that is internally
consistent and unique to this tape, and, whaddya know, rapping his hardest.
Call him “young Jay-Z,” as he instructs us. Or don’t. He’s too busy to care. A-
Bird Money (17 Mar
2009)
The American motherfucker
returns to form with another tape that harkens back to Hard To Kill, and it is quite long. It’s not the longest, though,
and the music is strong enough to facilitate its play time. Attribute this
small success to Zaytoven, whose beats increasingly balance luxury and cheapo
minimalism in the same way that Gucci Mane’s lyrics vacillate between trapping,
spending, and fucking, albeit sometimes archly or surreally. On Bird Money, the pendulum mostly rests at
“spending,” and the celebratory language of his conspicuous consumption is as
straightforward as Gucci lyrics get. Wacky and occasionally funky, the tape is
above all self-referential – the apparent theme of money and jewelry that
pervades nearly every track underlies and circumspectly promotes the image of
the neon pimp he half-assedly courted two or three years previously, and the
repeat classics – from Chicken Talk’s “Street
Smart” to EA Sportscenter’s “Fast
Break,” not to mention the intro’s “Freaky Gurl” tease – inspire a nostalgia
for Guccis past. An idiosyncratic retrospective. B+
Murder Was The Case (5 May
2009)
As is the case with all
great poets, the corpus of Gucci Mane’s work, his mixtapes & albums, forms
a narrative parallel to but not necessarily reflective of its creator’s life.
The more infrequent albums tend to tell this story better than the tapes. Like Trap-A-Thon, Murder Was the Case is not Gucci-endorsed – again Big Cat just
compiled a mishmash of what material was available to them. But in this case
their success in crafting a coherent story out of that chaos falters. The
lifestyle of luxury Gucci’s floundered in gains dimension – yang to yen,
punishment to crime – without advancing his music, and not in a fashion as
enjoyable as Trap-A-Thon. From the
opening mantra of “this kush is perfect,” Gucci celebrates the spoils of his
fame, condones a life of crime when it pays, and mourns his transgressions when
they don’t – all potentially interesting, except they’re not, and it’s hard to
forget that it’s not Gucci’s own hand responsible for this thematic
arrangement. Musically, the only thing distinguishing this sham from the
mixtapes is its welcome lack of DJ signatures and contrived song transitions.
That is, every song here is quite clearly a song, but few of them are thoroughly
strong. Opener “Runnin’ Back” gears listeners up for a momentum on which the
rest of the album fails to deliver. “Neva Had Shit” succeeds solely on its
drum-lite, horn-heavy instrumental. The ragga toaster on the front end of “Murder
For Fun” goes hard as fuck, but combined with the song’s premise of killing
pussy niggas for fun, it’s too reminiscent of Buju Banton and the batty boys of
“Boom Bye Bye” to be appealing in good taste. Taste is subjective, though;
respect is less so. Have some respect and leave the story to the mixtapes. B-
Writing on the Wall (15 May
2009)
Fresh off a brief prison
stint à la Hard To Kill, the Mayor
returns to work with palpable fury on one of his best and most challenging
works. Focused is an understatement – fiercely determined is more like it, and
even the multitude of (generally excellent) features can’t distract listeners
from the workhorse spirit and semi-Kanyean ambition fully at play here for the
first time. “Wasted” is a slightly awkward standout that would become a
signature piece in Gucci’s repertoire, and “Game” basically just revamps Murder Was The Case’s “Neva Had Shit”
with more gratifying drums, but even in those few cases when they weren’t,
these songs sound like they were all recorded at the same time. It’s as if
Guwop spent his incarceration dreaming of finally committing every frothing
idea he had straight to CD lest he find himself locked up again, which, as we
all know, he would. So it’s roughly at this point that we meet the Gucci of Spring Breakers and Creative Loafing cover stories, the psychologically tortured
impresario and obsessive-compulsive studio man with a hunger for achievement so
intense that it ultimately fucked him up. For those who think Brian Wilson,
this is the anti-Smile: the sound of
a madcap genius bubblingly eager to put his best foot forward because release,
not refinement, is his priority. It sucks that Gucci’s idea of achievement is
prolificness over perfection; I doubt the man has ever revised a line or hook
in his career, much less a sonic detail. Mr. Perfect my ass. He comes pretty
damn close, though. A-
The Movie: Part 2 (The Sequel) (22 Jul
2009)
In most cases, we can
count on a DJ Drama-produced Gucci Mane to be inferior to a Zaytoven-produced
Gucci Mane. Are we agreed on this? This feature-heavy mixtape is no exception
to that rule. But there’s plenty to like here, from the near-peaking snare and
hella-catchy Trey Songz hook on “Beat It Up,” to “Gucci,” a more luxurious
“Party Like A Rock Star” featuring a shockingly mild Nicki Minaj. Even less a
concept album than the first Movie, Part 2 finds Gucci, as we often do,
experimenting with new tools at a delicate moment in his career: as he’s poised
for widespread pop recognition, with his make-or-break album in the works, it
makes sense for him to market test as much material as he can on his true
believers, the Atlantans who still have access to tapes like this one at
practically any Bankhead convenience store and who will love Gucci
unconditionally whether his experiments succeed or not. Lucky for us, they do
succeed. One of these experiments is in the rapping itself. Gucci gets
ambitious with his flows and thematics, and his free-associative freestyle is
practically as quotable as ever: “in my mansion/listening to Marilyn
Manson/dancin’” is nearly as bizarre as “where the weed man/Spongebob/part time
job rakin’ leaves.” The other new addition to the toolbox is the use of the
feature as patchwork: where Gucci’s skills fall short, contributors Snoop Dogg,
Shawnna, and Waka Flocka pick up the slack. As per usual, the material on the
second half drags. But there’s enough good here to forget about that shit. B+
Wasted: The Prequel (4 Sep
2009)
Opening on “Wasted,” nearly
depleted of its initial power yet far from retired in Gucci’s catalogue,
Guwop’s first EP is more a prequel to The
State vs. Radric Davis than it is the Movie
series – a preview of sorts. As a fan of brevity, I have no problem with this
strategy. It also helps that every song here is fire. I particularly like the
Juelz Santana and Big Boi features on “She Got a Friend.” Who would have
guessed – a promotional throwaway at least as good as what it’s promoting. The
deluxe edition of Radric Davis
appends this EP to the album proper, which is a real treat. A
The Burrprint (The Movie 3D) (10 Oct
2009)
Who names these shits?
The man who takes them? It shouldn’t matter, because Gucci’s titles are
generally as noncorrelative as couplets like the oft-quoted “popping
Cris, think that I need Alcohol Anonymous/45 in the club, I could kill a
hippopotamus.” But music this thin calls for some sort of unification, or at
least some dimension, as the title suggests but never delivers on. Generally
considered to be Gucci’s best mixtape, I’m surprised to find how conventional it
is. I hear none of the “sneakily melodic sensibility” that Pitchfork’s Tom
Breihan wrote of at the time, and none of the lyrical brilliance of Bird Flu Part 2 or Writing On The Wall, comic or otherwise. What’s more, there’s not a
single standout track on an album comprised largely of new songs, and there’s
no talk of squad love on the album that gathers Gucci’s Brick Squad in one
place for the first time. Also, how damn 2009 is that cover art? C
The Cold War: Part 1 (Guccimerica) (17 Oct
2009)/ The Cold War: Part 2 (Great
Brrritain) (17 Oct 2009)/ The Cold
War: Part 3 (Brrrussia) (17 Oct 2009)
Three tapes in one day?
Goddamn, man. – is what people said when the semi-legendary trilogy dropped in
October of ’09. In ‘15, such antics from Gucci Mane are about as shocking as hip
shaking from Elvis. All that means is that Gucci (or his management) has found and
stuck to a successful strategy – creatively packaging back-catalog material and
releasing it periodically to keep the rapper on listeners’ ears while he’s in jail
or otherwise creatively incapacitated – and there’s nothing inherently wrong
with that. Unfortunately, nothing on these tapes – which combined are roughly
the length of Mr. Perfect on its own –
does very much to help those listeners forget that what they’re hearing is beta
content. C
The State vs. Radric Davis (8 Dec
2009)/The State vs. Radric Davis (Deluxe) (8
Dec 2009)
Much of the content of
this album is so familiar to even the most casual Gucci Mane fan – pretty sure my
mom has heard “Lemonade” – that I feel silly summarizing it. As a career move,
it’s equal parts All Eyez on Me and Me Against The World, simultaneously
post-jail and pre-jail. But since it would not be until 2016’s explicitly All Eyez-channeling Everybody Looking that Gucci’s incarceration would actually engender
in him a 2Pac-sized stylistic transformation, it’s better to compare it to the
work of a peer: Lil Wayne’s Carter III,
another long-awaited commercial album by a consummate mixtape professional who
would also soon face jail time and a years-long career slump. Radric Davis’ “Deluxe” edition in
particular supports this comparison both in its refusal, despite its title, to
deal with the real-life threats Gucci’s career was facing at the time; and in
its generous, diverse abundance of content. What’s normally a cynical
recoupment strategy is something special here: the album and its bonus tracks,
plus the near-flawless Wasted EP,
sequenced with no rhyme or reason but the flow the mixtapes promise but rarely
deliver. Simply to say that all this coincided with the peak of Gucci’s
popularity is not to say that it’s also one of his best creative efforts. But it
is. A
Is this the end for the Mayor? The last hurrah for
The Rascal King behind bars? Nah, I’ll do it again, in Part 3: Everybody Lookin’
(2010-2012)
