The world burns, but hip-hop thrives
I’m not quite yet an old fogey. The way I process even the most lyrical of music means Lil Uzi Vert can just as soon as astound me as, say, Royce da 5’9’’ can. ‘True’ hip-hop heads (you all know who you are) scoff at the hippity-boppity aesthetics of Playboi Carti doing the milly rock and being rewarded with a gazillion views for sparse ad libs. The injustice is pretty obvious. What’s considered real hip-hop, “food,” possesses literary heft, the ability to motivate more in young black men than just the desire to dominate parties. This argument misses the point of music altogether, and is most devastating when truly talented rappers sip from its fountain.
Two of the scene’s finest just now are careful to manufacture surfaces, upon which to lay rhymes, that represent black music as opposed to just compliant drum loops wrapped in sizzling bass. Early this year everyone hopped aboard the Griselda train, and with good reason. This rap trio is building a solid reputation for itself as a mobster act that calls on Diana Ross and them to help soundtrack your demise. A certain Motown sensibility is harnessed by modern machinery. It’s powdered with street narratives that command grudging respect from the ad lib generation, and summon nostalgia in anyone that ever nodded their heads to Mobb Deep. Who even knows how old these guys are, the way the Internet hand-delivers content you didn’t realize you needed - that you didn’t realize existed; but that energy overflows right onto ‘Pray For Paris’, the fourth solo disc from Westside Gunn.
The album’s availability, not far removed at all from a recent Griselda drop, suggests a talent anxious to state his individual merits. I perked my ears up, personally, when I heard the sublime tinkle of ‘Broadway Joes’ off Hitler Wears Hermes 7, a grimey PSA whose soft piano keys are coated in forefatherly bass. The first verse of this song contains this beauty, “Find me in the cocaine spot, looking icy/ Connects know me on the first name basis/ I’m looking tasteless/ Chanel on the runway, you on the waiting list.” In the second, Gunn discusses stashing (I trust) registered firearms right “by the Pampers.” Gunn is a multidimensional animal, in the three minutes or so it takes to bump a track: a father, a lover of high fashion, a gun owner, a drug dealer, a poet. I don’t think I’ve heard any gangster content, in any medium, drip with this much narrative juice since I last binge-watched a season of The Sopranos. Which was a while ago.
It irks me to have to declare that ‘Pray For Paris’ is a bit of a missed opportunity, with maybe one too many lulls (amidst some fine production), where Gunn seems to be waiting around for something dangerous to happen. On the otherwise perfect ‘Euro Step’, Gunn raps about Swiss slopes, bloodied designer coats and expensive dogs to a beat so sinister and conniving you can feel it tickle your spine. But it’s all over so very quickly, and then something (or someone) gets in the way of the next tune repeating the trick; a less urgent delivery, sometimes, or a rather pedestrian guest appearance. On ‘Party with Pop Smoke’, a sound science must find a way to inject into my veins, the poet Keisha Plum emerges from a sweet bunch of horns to describe murdering a powerful lover. Pardon me, but the whole thing is fucking glorious - enough, anyways, to declare Gunn the new King of New York in conversations about these things.
That frees Freddie Gibbs, a native of the Los Angeles scene, to breathe new life into West Coast rap. I first became aware of the man watching my nephew break the law in Grand Theft Auto V, his signature sound all over the stereo when gamers happened to jump a car. Gibbs is the sort of homeboy that slaps you round the head and joshes all night, while you tour the city running illicit errands. He narrates inner city life with the wisdom and experience of someone who spent an entire decade purposely gathering wounds, which he now inflicts on the sounds wrought by prestige producers. Gibbs is totally in his element on collaborative projects with the likes of MadLib and now the Alchemist, for the recently released ‘Alfredo’: a gritty collection of back-to-back gems.
The sheer magic, of a rapper with just ‘some real shit to say’ and a decorated beatmaker with nothing left to prove. I mentioned Mobb Deep earlier, and some of their Noughties bangers - the songs people snapped their fingers to - were cooked by the Alchemist. Those tunes still slap like righteous hell, and the man has no desire to replicate their specific charms when someone like Gibbs calls on his services. Alfredo has so much respect for black musical history, whose apex is circa Motown, that it renders something mystical and dream-like for Gibbs to smelt into vivid war stories. Alfredo has this base in common with ‘Pray for Paris’, and also its own spectacular cameo from Tyler, the Creator, who hops on tracks lately just to remind you of his masterful, violent whimsy. But it’s the superior record, because Gibbs could win the Man Booker Prize for how he relates car chases alone: without sentimentality or bravado.
Maybe hip-hop did die all those years ago. So it could come back as music that makes valid attempts to transcend the confines of the cages it was born in.
