Monday, July 6, 2009

Gucci Mane Is A Good Rapper


Did people ever actually eat this shit?

I just wanted to state publicly that I was wrong. Gucci Mane is a good rapper. On occasion he's prone to feats of mind-numbing retardation, he can be awfully mealy-mouthed, to the point where he ruins his often-quite-clever lyrics, he only raps about the same two or three subjects and over the same sorts of beats, causing most of his songs to be totally indistinguishable from each other, and his fans really overstate their case (pace the bizarre "Gucci's a wordsmith, he uses big words like wonderful and awesome in awesome ironic ways" blow-up a couple weeks ago). But he's also a really good rapper, one who has the capacity to surprise you lyrically, wow you with his flow, and amuse with his ad-libs and varied deliveries. One who can, when he's on, make a really hot line out of something quite prosaic like "So Icy is my company, and millions made monthly." Songs from artists I don't give a fuck about (Mario, Mariah, Trey Songz) become must-repeats because he's on them. He needs to improve leaps and bounds if he ever wants to make a classic album, become anything more than a way smaller version of the frustrating phenomenon that is Lil Wayne, or even become a rapper I and many others like me would enjoy listening to for any sustained period of time, but, as things stand right now, he's probably the only guy out there whose every song you owe the courtesy of a listen. (Even if they all sound alike.) That said, I fully expect this guy to never triumph over his deficits and make the album he's theoretically capable of, a la Wayne, Chamillionaire (what happened there?), arguably Cam (I'm not as big a Purple Haze fan as some), and, just for the sake of random controversy, Lil Flip, whom it's become unfashionable to like but was a really great rapper for a stretch, around the time he appeared on 'Ridin Spinners,' 'Like a Pimp,' 'State Your Name Gangsta,' 'Welcome To The South," "From The South," etc. So there you go.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with pretty much all of this except saying that "So Icey is my company..." was a good line. I kinda don't want to write anything about Gucci now because I feel like you summed it up as concisely as you could.

Anonymous said...

gucci'll never make a classic album, but i kinda chalk that up to him being a new breed of rapper ala Wayne, where his greatness comes from his a bunch of great music that probably couldnt be cut down to 14 great songs. The Movie is probably the closest he'll get to classic anything.

Asher said...

"a bunch of great music that probably couldnt be cut down to 14 great songs."

Does that imply that he's capable of putting out an album that even contains 14 great songs? Like, that his genius can't be contained in album form? Because it's not like Carter 3 or Carter 2 or whatever have many great songs. They might have, I don't know, 5 each, along with a lot of interesting failures. I don't think these guys are focused enough to make great albums, or even albums that could be made into great albums if you lost the filler.

ghengis blond said...

i'm a millenial willing to offer the olive branch on this point but i'd contend that with the press-n-hold faculty of my on the go playlist the album was vanquished as the fundamental music vessel. song by song we go, mayn

Anonymous said...

"Like, that his genius can't be contained in album form?"

Thats exactly what I'm saying. Wayne.

Asher said...

But what I'm saying is that Wayne has never exactly made an album that could be a great album if you simply edited it down. All of the Carters have a couple great songs, a fair amount of alright stuff, and some pure filler, so, you know, I wouldn't say that his genius can't be contained in album form, more that more often than not he's incapable of coherent songwriting, or writing a lyric that doesn't devolve into lazy bullshit somewhere down the line. Although maybe that is to say that his genius can't be contained, for the most part, in song, and that it's more suited to freestyling.

David said...

"(pace the bizarre "Gucci's a wordsmith, he uses big words like wonderful and awesome in awesome ironic ways" "

nobody made this argument dude

Asher said...

Oh it happened. Noz actually said that rappers don't usually use big words like wonderful. Or, use it in that way, i.e., "x is wonderful."

Logan said...

not to be better, because I buy viagra in large quantities, or will be better to buy a perfume gucci