I pretty much decided as soon as I heard my first Gucci Mane verse that I would not be listening to him any longer, thank you very much. I like to think that I have a certain degree of, I dunno, let’s call it taste. Taste means you enjoy the finer things in life, and part of that is refraining from partaking in the cruder pleasures. I am all about enjoying low-brow music — Girl Talk turns the low-brow into the sublime, and I’m all over that — but I’m not about to become a champion for Soulja Boy. Publicly liking something means you have to stake a little bit of your credibility on it, and I haven’t been willing to do that with mainstream rap as of late.
A couple of my friends are Gucci Mane fanatics. They also wear trucker hats and read Marx, so I figured their fandom was just another part of their ironic personal brands. My wall of indifference has been crumbling, though, and I think I’m starting to understand what Gucci Mane is all about. It took about twenty listenings of ‘Make the Trap Say Aye‘ and another twenty for ‘Wasted‘ before I understood the simplicity of it all. Then I downloaded the new Diplo-produced mixtape Free Gucci, and I gotta admit, I genuinely like it. It’s a free download and he may end up being one of the most important rappers of the twenty-tens, so I recommend you get it and at least familiarize yourself with the kind of music that people are still buying these days.
The big breakthrough came a few days ago. “Gucci Mane ain’t shit,” I said to myself. “All he raps about is selling drugs, getting money, and buying jewelry for his dick.” And I heard a small voice in the distance say “just like Busta Rhymes.” Hmm. That’s a good point. Gucci Mane raps about that stuff because that’s just what people rap about. That’s the idiom he’s working within, and it’s unfair to criticize someone’s efforts because of their idiom. Granted, rapping about drugs and money is really easy. That’s how Gucci Mane can make thirty albums a year seemingly without putting any effort into it. It takes a lot of work to make that kind of career seem effortless.
Basically it’s difficult for me to just like or dislike something on its own without worrying about what it means for me to like or dislike something. Sometimes music is good because it’s easy to enjoy. See for yourself.
Gucci Mane – “Dope Boys (Bird Peterson remix)”
Gucci Mane – “Excuse Me (Memory Tapes remix)”
Gucci Mane – “I Be Everywhere (Mumdance remix)”
