My Name Is Fred

Do you like the hip-hop music?  I have to say that I haven't been this excited in years about a new emcee as I am about this individual Freddie Gibbs.  At one point, Gibbs was signed to Interscope Records, but his major-label release was aborted in this tough economic climate (join the club).  Temporary setback only, I hope; it sounds like most of the tracks on his excellent mixtape The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs are salvaged from the Interscope project.  For one thing, most every song sounds finished and is cleanly mixed.  For another, he works with a bunch of quality heavy-hitter producers; the first two tunes come courtesy of Just Blaze and Polow da Don.  I have to imagine Gibbs will pop up somewhere soon getting paid for an official release.

Anyway, he's too good not to.  Gibbs is from Gary, Indiana, ancestral home of the Jackson 5, and part of why I dig him so much is how much love he shows for his home town—even if, like he says, it don't love him back.  Regional specificity aside, he is also raw as hell on the mic.  His baritone sometimes sounds a little like Z-Ro, sometimes a little like Pac, but it's always pretty authoritative.  His flow is definitely heavily influenced by H-Town, but he's equally comfortable spitting fast over a quick tempo, going from single- to double-time over mid-tempo, and riding behind the beat on slower and funkier stuff.  Content-wise, he comes awfully hard but is also highly lyrical.  On the incredibly effective "Flamboyant," he disavows meta battle rhyming ("My only interest is pimpin and panderin, pistol packin, so fuck rap/I ain't a nigga that be rappin bout rappin"), but no question he has the wit and dexterity to go that route if he wants.  (Toward the end of the song he does indulge a little: "Freddie Gibbs run up in cribs like Kris Kringle/Touch down and talk more shit than Ocho Cinco.")  Most of the subject matter is gangsta shit, but, similar to how Scarface used to do it, the moral dimension and personal consequences of that life are always lurking, sometimes in the background but more often right up front.  Gibbs never oversells the drama and falls into emo character acting; his lyrics are journalistic and matter-of-fact.  Most of Miseducation is highlights, but maybe the most effective of all is the leadoff track "GI Pride," with Freddie delivering moving verses and a big, fatalist singalong chorus about living and dying where he came up in Gary, being who he is because of the place he was raised, all over the opening synth washes of "Flashdance ... What a Feeling."  Believe me, it works.  Then again, the probation-violating narrator of "Never Ending Cycle" also speaks pretty clearly.  So does the dude in "Goodies," running down his extensive menu of controlled substances for sale, and then also there's the Ozzy-sampling nightmare catalog "Close Your Eyes," and—well, like I said, pretty much the whole record is the truth.

Not all of it, of course; this is 2009 and hip-hop is basically still a boys' club, so you get the usual casual degradation of women.  The catchy "Stray" features Devin the Dude moaning the typical Copeland chorus "I cain't staand ... stupid bitches," and Gibbs's verses are not a whole lot more feminist.  Likewise, the tightness of the rhyming cannot obscure the fact that murder ballad "Queen (Luv U 2 Death)" (Fred means the shit literally) and the extremely bumping casual-sex advocacy piece "How We Do" regard females as fundamentally subhuman.  I can't dismiss how annoying this shit is, or complain if you'd rather not have it in your life.

Still, you know, if you buy the ticket, you have to take the ride, even the rough parts.  Unlike some other recent efforts, there is a ton here that's substantively worth engaging apart from the retrograde gender nonsense.  And while I'm not trying to defend the indefensible, this sort of gross knuckleheadedness also reminds us that the person talking at us through our speakers is a definable individual with a point of view, obvious flaws, and irrational passions, just like the rest of us.  Comparing Gibbs to the threemcees of Tanya Morgan on their fine new album Brooklynati, I can't help but thinking Gibbs wins by a mile.  For sure, Donwill and Ilyas and even Von Pea are terrific rappers, but they go out of their way to avoid degrading anybody, except in the most playful manner imaginable.  I wouldn't exactly call this a problem.  By no means do I want to shit on the idea of elevating the discourse.  It's just that, particularly after listening to an entire LP of the stuff, the end product feels safe and denatured, certainly never dangerous.  Like Gibbs said, it's rappin bout rappin.  And rappin bout the history of rap, to boot.*  There's such a thing as too much Native Tongues nostalgia; Brooklynati sort of seals its fate when it kicks off with a half-second snippet from "Pass the Plugs."  (The production on Brooklynati suffers from the same weakness.  It's always musical and generally quite funky, but it doesn't have a ton of edge and is more often familiar than forward-thinking.)

No doubt, hip-hop is more than flexible enough to accommodate Tanya Morgan, Freddie Gibbs, and more.  It's not a matter of choosing approach one over the other.  Hip-hop can accommodate anything you throw at it.  That's why we love it.  But hip-hop culture also feeds and thrives on conflict, on beef, on brutally dissing people for no good reason except you feel like it.  It may be petty, and it's certainly problematic, but it gives the whole enterprise some juice and the listener something to grab onto.  Lyrical skills don't cut it by themselves.  Brooklynati is a little too smooth for me.  The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs is anything but, which is why it's the best rap record I've heard this year.

* In case you think I'm unfairly down on Tanya, I should admit that Ilyas comes across much more like a human being, and much less a 92-era animatronic amusement park ride, on The Prelude, his solo record from the very beginning of this year.  He even drops some genuinely crude sex rhymes on "L.S.D."  In case you're wondering, that stands for "long stiff dick."  Sadly, the song will never get an official release, because it's built on an uncleared sample from Pink Floyd's "Any Colour You Like" and Roger Waters don't play.  Even better, the absurdly good single "Real Hip-Hop Don't Die" has 1000 times more raw life to it than anything on Brooklynati.  If you want to check that out, you can download The Prelude here.

Comments

[tris mccall]

stick with *brooklynati*. the production is sweet and it's a grower. also a very good record for house parties.

i have also been spinning *travel properly* by tampa rapper rahim samad and this new record by scripts 'n' screwz from east st. louis. and some very local stuff that isn't all that good, but i like it because it's very local. i am all about the underground hip-hop so far in '09. that is probably because there hasn't been any high-profile rap record released yet. i can't count cam'ron. i keep ..almost.. buying the gorilla zoe album and/or the rick ross album, but i just can't plunk down $15.99 for those. i'll wait for tunes to get used copies in.

[S.M.]

Don't you worry. I am not anti-*Brooklynati* at all; I just listened to it (and enjoyed it) this morning. I just wish maybe that it wasn't such a good house-party record.

The Officer Rawse album is surprisingly good -- top-shelf commercial production and lots of entertaining guest shots -- but, you know, it's still Rick Ross. He's still fundamentally a buffoon. Zoe is way more charming, but too much of that record tries and fails to recapture the "Lost" vibe.