I confess that I didn’t become properly acquainted with Gucci Mane until early 2006. I was at the mall, buying work clothes, and during a quick detour to HMV I happened upon the Trap House CD. I further confess that at the time I took little more than momentary interest in what I saw. I did recognize Mane’s gold frames and Andruw Jones jersey from the previous year’s “Icey” video — which I had only half seen only one time, at a friend’s house in Massachusetts (he had MTV Jams; Canada, you understand, has former-East-Bloc-grade rap radio and music-video stations), and which I, along with many others, had blithely assumed was a Jeezy track — and I do remember thinking to myself that Gucci Mane was the best of all possible names for a Southern rapper (probably for any rapper, period). But as for the CD itself, well, the iconography, the song titles, the vibe of the thing seemed to be of a moment that was either passing or already in the past. I remember feeling a vague and fleeting pang of pity for him: “His name is pitch-perfect and he looks totally cool on the cover of his album, but by next year he’ll be as well-remembered as Mystikal.†People remember Mystikal, of course, but mainly in terms of squandered momentum and unrealized potential.
It bears pointing out that I was thinking these thoughts in the immediate aftermath of 2005 – the year of “Mic Check,” of “Draped Up,” of “And Then What“; the year of “Fireman” and Wayne’s verse in Paul Wall’s “March & Step,” of We Got it For Cheap Vol. 2, and of, it has to be said, Late Registration; the year of “Stay Fly” and of good old Pitchfork bending the rules such that December 2004’s Purple Haze could occupy #9 on their year-end top 50. My personal 2005 ended at a New Year’s Eve house party in Toronto at which not one but two of the male guests were clad in Juicy J’s green-ghoul all-over-print T-shirt. It had been a monumental year for a type of rap that hadn’t yet been condescendingly saddled with the putatively affectionate but actually dismissive label of “ignorant.†But from where I stood, on that February morning in that record store, mere weeks before Three 6’s spot-blowing, era-ending Oscar win, I believed, in the sweeping, self-satisfied manner of a dilettante attempting to stake an intellectual claim on something he’s only recently discovered and thus doesn’t understand,1 that a critical backlash against materialistic bounce music was imminent (it was) and that, ipso facto, I was taking my first and last look at an also-ran, a bit player, a never-was (I was not).
Almost four years have passed, and you know how things played out. The release of The State vs. Radric Davis marks the moment at which Gucci goes from being the most talked-about rapper in rap circles to being to most talked-about rapper in all circles. He’ll be to 2010 to what Wayne was to 2008. Understand that nobody without a financial stake in the matter is happier about this than I am. Gucci’s rise to the top is compelling in light of what he had to go through (an attempt on his life brought about, in part, by a falling-out with the major artist who originally put him on, an unfortunate Youtube clip, a case, a violation, another violation) and it’s especially compelling to me on account of how quickly and prematurely I had consigned him to irrelevance. I feel about him the way I imagine Michel Therrien feels about the Pens.
The record. I didn’t hear even a quarter of what Gucci released this year (not even an eighth, to be perfectly real about it) but I heard enough to know the difference between the loose, experimental, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Gucci of mixtapes and the focused, industry-wary, eyes-on the prize Gucci of features and studio albums. The amazing thing about the difference is that, with respect to lyrics and delivery, if not necessarily beats and hooks, the difference barely exists. No one else, save for Cam’ron, is so comfortable in his own skin as to be so at home in both arenas. Like Cam, Gucci is a ham and an inspired goofball, but whereas Cam is the status rapper, convincing you at every turn of his brilliance and all-encompassing contempt,2 Gucci is the social-contract rapper, at pains to assure you that he’s on your side, concerned above all with entertaining you and finding ways of allowing you to relate to him. The introspective numbers (“Classical,” “My Own Worst Enemy”) and the banger joints (“Stupid Wild,” “Bingo”) bear this out in equal measure.
Albums might be a thing of the past, but mixtapes aren’t the way of the future — and The State’s handful of club tracks (“Spotlight,” “Bad Bad Bad”) and the full cohort of its hooks are heartening proof that Gucci still believes in the legitimacy and importance of full-length studio albums, that he believes they’re something into which it’s worth investing creative and financial capital. I happen to think that the album qua album — the album written as album — is still the best way to listen to music, but of course mine isn’t the opinion anyone should be worried about.
It might be surprising that Gucci’s success is coming when most of the class of ’05 have quieted, washed up, or fallen off; it might be unfortunate, or grimly apropos, that such success is coming in the midst of yet another jail term; and it might be annoying that mainstream critics are pointing to his success in support of overly broad appraisals of rap’s health.
None of this matters.
Gucci made it.
I’ll never doubt you again, Mane.
- A simile alluding to neo-colonialism might be apt here, but I suspect your local think-blog has that angle covered.
- A third confession: to my small-town-Ontario, guitar-weaned ear, Cam’s vibe has always been a little disconcerting. Conversely, Gucci reminds me of the guileless and underappreciated next-level geniuses I went to high school with: Mike Dobson, who would matter-of-factly describe to you his failed attempts at using a vacuum as a tool of mechanized onanism; Matt Poynter, who at one time held the Guinness-published world record for longest distance traveled while sitting backwards on the handlebars of a bicycle, and who’d roam the halls and haunt the rear-most rows of classrooms while listening on his Walkman to a homemade cassette of the audio of "Good Will Hunting"; and John Watts, who rode around town on a BMX rigged with a CB radio. I am no longer in touch with any of the above-mentioned, but they are nonetheless among the brightest and funniest men I have ever known, and I am proud to have grown up in their company.
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