letz talk abt gucci mane

when you tipped did the employees sing a song to the tune of "wasted"?

imagining a gucci musical world where people around al constantly break into gucci tracks

i would've hoped that as obviously as gucci partakes in drugz, he'd do so w/o having a drug problem as such.

hes such a ridic hedonist tho ... i cant imagine hes one for moderation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cozpmPM2Hdo

^^^sobriety in song right there

um 'lemonade' is brilliant!

re drugs, it does seem like there's some sort of stigma in the rap community about doing cocaine. like, weed is obviously a-ok (unless you're grandpa clipse--"YOU DIDN'T SEE IT COMIN / U WERE PROBABLY HIGH!"); lean is understood to be dangerous but still cool; ecstasy is sort of questionable like getting your asshole licked but ultimately defensible (is you rollin? bitch i might be), but doing coke is like actually an indication of a substance abuse problem. i'm thinking of that purple haze outtake 'yeo man' by cam where he goes on and on about not doing coke. and i haven't heard gucci talk about doing it a single time--esp. not glamorizing it. it's pretty conspicuously absent from his lyrics. in fact the only thing i can think of is the 'got court in early morning i don't really wanna go, / say i violated probation just because i blew my nose' which is a very sad and poignant line in this new light.

you guys probably know the history of this much better than i do. was there ever a time or a subgroup of rap in which or for whom doing coke was a cool thing?

also, for what it's worth, i've always thought the quantity of blunts gucci's described to be absurd. like sure, i know these guys smoke weed all day every day but stuff like "appetizer: 30 blunts" and "in the club with a half a pound, 150 blunts" were just ridiculous hyperbole. but starting to think those are accurate numbers.

i think doing ecstasy is considered pretty 'cool' or at least acceptable (gucci raps about being on pills - he says "beans" i think - a lot iirc) - the thing about coke is that it's obv connected to crack & the sad, homeless, dirty junkie lifestyle that people like the kingpins sell too. on an egotistical level, you can still be the rick ross-style don if you use coke, lean, x, whatever, but if you're a cokehead you're already down the ladder on some level or you end up ruining yourself a la scarface or, uh, scott storch

i would not be shocked at all if gucci was smoking 30 blunts a day, esp if he's sharing w people

n an egotistical level, you can still be the rick ross-style don if you use coke weed, lean, x, whatever

"banana boat full of blow" in slumber party ... generally its assumed that the blow is for the ladiez, tho, i think?

id heard rumors of gucci's tony montana lifestyle prior :-/ but in light of two probation violations, right after the other, it totally makes sense

fwiw "white lines" by furious five was original (and is still, kinda) pro-blow

banana boat full of blow i always took to be like smuggling. but it's a moot point--that line definitely is not supposed to be about him doing coke. that stretch is one of my all time favs of his though.

i can't think of the instances but i distinctly remember noting, on more than one occasion, him rapping some sort of dialogue in which he was being coy about being on ecstasy. it was like "bitch i might be" but stretched out over several lines. granted, that could be a specific thing about him hiding the fact from women that he meets. but i just feel like in general that there's always a sort of aspect of keeping ecstasy use hidden, either in the words used to describe it or the descriptions of its use themselves

well there's the whole gangster ethos where you're not supposed to get hooked on the stuff you're selling to other people, esp. coke. i've got a very obvious and specific movie in mind but can't think of it, my mind's elsewhere atm

he is def joking about being on x all the time 'rollin rollin rollin we aint slept in weeks'

idk i think "i might be" is pretty overt about gucci being on x - i always took the "bitch, i might be" response to "girl he geeked up" as gucci being flirtatious and kinda sarcastic

i mean this stuff is basically spelling it out

Aint your name lil Trina cause you look like Janet Jackson
Im off three double stacks and Im lookin for that action

&

Gucci is your time give me five more minutes and a cold orange juice cause im really really trippin

compare that with some stuff from jackie's "rollin" which is obv totally about ecstasy

orange juice to kick it in
rollin blunts and kickin it

&

break you off, all night long
tryna put it thru your back
say you comin down well mama eat one of these triple stacks

i don't mean really actually secretive just sort of apprehensive about shouting it from the rooftops. i'll post some lyrics when i come across them

at least, apprehensive on a sliding scale that includes '150 blunts' on one end and 'violated probation just because i blew my nose :(" on the other

going back to what we were talking about yesterday about Gucci's popularity not connecting across the board -- part of being a big hip hop star tends to involve looking cool in videos, and that's a weak point for him, sometimes he just seems to be standing around looking really awkward, "5 Star Chick" is one of the first times he's really carried off any kind of star power charisma in a video. and then of course in "Spotlight" he goes back to being this boring guy slumped over hiding behind sunglasses.

i dunno, i think he looks hella cool in whatever the video is where he's chillin in the carpark and on his bus.

iced up something serious

i think al is right - he doesn't have the outsized personality of a wayne or a ludacris, and he doesn't have the 'look' of a hip-hop star a la ross or jeezy or 50 - in this sense he's probably closest to like... t.i. who seems to be pretty soft spoken & frail - the one thing tho is that t.i. is def a sex symbol, and i don't think gucci has that going for him

'And my belly get so big I can hardly see my toes'

idk whether it's just what i've been paying more attention to but i've definitely been hearing a ton more hip-hop lyrics about being on e of late, "when i pop a pill i take off like a thundercat" &c. but actually thinking about it this isn't that new, it's been pretty common all decade - miss e being so addictive, plus of course it was totally central to hyphy.

agree with al on the video point, gucci just doesn't look remotely badass ever...he has this permanent pot-bellied slouch going on, NAGL.

xps

gucci always seems like one of the boys rather than a leader, like t.i. does

wtf u guys are crazy, he's a total character/personality in his appearance ... hes not a sex symbol but his whole swag, the different chains, the oversized glasses, its not 'nagl' is that hes still like this potbellied kush smoking backwoods southern street dude

hes the total opposite of a blank slate

hes got way more 'character' going for him than jeezy's whole coneheads crack dealer motif

coneheads crack dealer

rofl at this

that's the thing, he's definitely a character but it comes across way more in his records than in his photos/videos imo

but deej i think it's not so much about what you describe - obv his chains are pretty iconic- but just watch any of this videos - "photo shoot," "wasted," "she got a friend" etc - he doesn't seem natural in front of the camera like a lot of guys do - he's not a ham like wayne, he's not a PRESENCE like the bigger guys - it's either something he will get better at or he just won't be able to do

his character isn't the sort that looks acceptably cool in hip-hop videos

and his interviews - he's not as good as expressing himself in conversation as well as say jeezy is - he doesn't give batshit interviews like wayne does - i agree w you that he has a defined persona/style, i just think it's less obv to the casual rap fan who buys records by big artists (and by proxy makes big artists big)

i dunno i think his character on film fits his 'character' in song pretty well. its like the authenticity of snoop not looking in the camera lens, glancing @ the ground in the g thang videos from '92. hes not a music video star, hes a hood rapper who happens to have blown up

i just mean when i see him in a video for a posse cut like "Boi," I think about how if this was the first time seeing the guy and wasn't listening hard to tell that he's rapping better than the other people on the track, there's no way I'd figure out from that he's the star on the rise in the video

man, i dunno. hes totally the least anonymous -- i mean mike jones doesnt even look like the mike jones from when mike jones was relatively famous. you dont think the whole chubby 6'3 gangster in bug-eyed glasses isnt a larger than life character?

when he raps in the 'posted at the store' video its like, there's no question who the star of that track is

you may not have noticed this but 80% of all rappers in 2009 have bug-eyed glasses.

dunno what 2 tell you -- i think hes got a distinct visual persona -- maybe not as archetypal as rick ross, but certainly as much/more so than jeezy

was there ever a time or a subgroup of rap in which or for whom doing coke was a cool thing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9kViDMem1Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzLhgvbhm9Y

and many many more

also come on. you think these dudes dont do coke youre kidding yourself. all of em. they' have TONS of cash on them and spend their lives in clubs in various cities.

http://shakashawshow.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/edlover.jpg

dont think anyone denied tons of rappers are doin coke

but yeah 3-6 rapped about it a lot

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhk5e5956t5a3VWc9A

the song hes taped recording here is crazy!!

maniac's verse is zzz tho

here's a lil story bout a nigga named gucci
grew up in the hood sellin dope and shootin uzi's
had a lil brother by the name of waka flocka
one thing about his lil brother? big chopper
east atlanta hardhead, everythang red
red diamond, red rag, red offsets
cali down to bouldercrest all way back to cali
hope to sell some chickens and i sold em in sun valley
man brick squad get it! they sheisty as a motherfucker
green birds, black birds more icier than you other suckers
kid that did the pounds of mid sold ki's for six i do admit
ecstasy for ex-convict, they try me? better split yo wig

he is weed free!

that studio looks super depressing

Here's a video of Gucci shoving and punching a woman in the face

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c22EYjWWClk

1:50

wow he really is the opposite of Charles Hamilton