letz talk abt gucci mane

I mean, we do get regional stuff, but it's west coast regional stuff

i.e. your region :-)

right

I'm guessing Mac Dre's "The Thizzle Dance" probably isn't a radio staple in your neck of the woods

dr4ke- this mix is dope btw, and i have cut a copy for the dude i know who keeps complaining about how hiphop isn't v. good like back when he used to dance for de la.

i def agree that "shine blockas" is a touch overrated, though i do like it a lot (7 or 8 prob) but it's way better than "wasted" - actual real-world success apart that didn't do anything that a dozen gucci tracks from last year alone didn't do better and more distinctively

wasted >>>> shine blockas

shine blockas isnt good bcuz of gucci, its big boi who tears that shit up, & even then its a pale shadow of some of his best shit

as gucci tracks go its not even top 40 of last year

thnx @ a h h

in chicago they played gucci mixtape tracks on the radio like they were singles before they were singles -- photo shoot, beat it up, i think i luv her, etc

ok, looks like the rap station in Seattle is picking up "Lemonade", where they never did the first two singles

Portland's rap station isn't tho :-/

PDX station not hardly worth turning on. Ever.

seems better in general than Seattle's, which isn't saying much at all

I like their sunday night chicano rap block and their mix show djs seem to have a bit more freedom

pretty sure I've never heard a sunday night chicano thing, I might have to check for that

i be runnin gunnin stunnin with a hundred killers ridin
you snitchin bitchin tellin-talin scared to stand beside me

damn this mix is d-_-b

kiu deej

a car drove by me blasting "lemonade" tonight ^_^

"everything" is increasingly becoming my fav gucci song of 09

hood star, foreign car, topless whip i need a bra

is that the one with the "i put that on eyrrthang" chorus?

great song

i heard lemonade irl this wkend too

ya

gucci mane silent but his ice still talkin
sippin lean and rappin, call it sleep walkin

ive been big into the flying lotus mix of photo shoot tho dont dig much other flying lotus stuff or the rest of the free gucci tape

i'm reading yall's best gucci verses of the year list (it's great btw) and realizing that one of his neatest tricks is keeping a really tenuous continuity throughout entire verses. i'm only noticing now that i see it spelled out, just listening it often sounds like he's dangerously close to non sequitir, but he's actually v lucid and organized, just in a subtle way.

still not feeling this guy, but here's a present from don rickles
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JBH3FNIP

samosa otm

"everything" is increasingly becoming my fav gucci song of 09

― waka flocka pedia (J0rdan S.), Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

my fav track off 'writings on the wall'

Tim F wrote the following about funky producer Ill Blu on his skykicking blog & i was showing it to Al on IM w/r/t Gucci parallels & he pointed out very correctly I think that this is particularly true of "Lemonade":

This of course means that on "Heartbreaker" Ill Blu aren't great pop qua pop arrangers, only great pop qua dance music arrangers - unlike an Artful Dodger or a Sunship or indeed a Crazy Cousinz, they're unwiling or unable to reduce and refine their armoury to the point where the song itself can take over, so even their most pop moments sound busy, overwhelming, musically egotistical in a way that undermines the potential for crossover. This is a problem if you're consumed with setting up universal "pop" barometers of judgment, but the question "does this work as a pop song" is always a loaded and misleading one - great pop songs are not instances of "perfect" pop so much as love letters between pop and something else. What's so appealing about Ill Blu is that they increasingly seem to approach their "pop" moments not by toning down their excesses (though earlier tunes like Princess's "Frontline" and their own "Rider" are more straightforward) but by ramping them up - the only way they're prepared to "cross over" is by being ever more ridiculously themselves.

also explains why spotlight was such an artistic failure

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

i think there's much simpler reasons as to why "spotlight" is so bad -- but certainly "wasted" & "lemonade" are big pop hits on gucci's own terms & people dig them because they are identifiably gucci mane, which "freaky gurl" & "spotlight" and even "so icy" aren't -- the same reasoning can be used to explain why "lollipop" wasn't seen as a massive sellout & why it was embraced as it was where "spotlight" really wasn't

i mean, i think in a lot of cases, rappers will get called on their bullshit -- shameless pop grabs will more often than not get rejected as such, but something like "soul survivor" can become a massive pop hit powered by the artists core fanbase if it seems like a parcel of the artist

I would like to hear more about this essence of gucci mane

i think what deej is saying -- & how i interpret that part about ill blu as it pertains to gucci -- is that -- & this is something both deej & i have written about before, i think -- gucci is extremely good at making songs that are blur the line between street & pop in a way that they exist in a middle ground in terms of audience -- he hasn't had a massive, top 10 smash, and he's far from an underground artists at this point -- gucci's discography has so many self-created, catchy choruses that don't belie the tropes of street rap, but work them into the structure of pop in a way that struck me as very fresh -- for as great as lil wayne & 50 cent's mixtape outputs are, they rapped over other people's beats and re-worked pop chorus melodies by interpolating the themes of street rap -- gucci on the other hand just wrote a countless amount of original hooks that do the same and are as catchy as 50 reworking "luv u better" or wayne re-working "what you know" -- there aren't any street rappers who are writing 'pop' hooks that seamlessly streamline in lines like "hit the mall buy everything, in the club buy all the Don/ we just came to have some fun and make the club run out of ones" or "rock star lifestyle might don't make it/ iving life high everyday click wasted/ sipping on purple stuff rolling up stanky/ wake up in the morning 10 clock drankin" -- that is kind of the 'essence' of gucci mane as a really unique pop rapper who, to quote tim, "seem[s] to approach [his] 'pop' moments not by toning down [his] excesses but by ramping them up" -- and this part, "the only way [he's] prepared to 'cross over' is by being ever more ridiculously [himself]." applies to both "wasted" & "lemonade"

hmm I don't really remember gucci choruses as being particularly poppy or catchy, but I haven't really spent the same amount of time with him that you have. to me they're hard to distinguish because he doesn't really change his timbre or flow for 'em, they kind of blend in to the verses. lol the first instance I thought of him was reworking smiley face into frowney face.

I do have yer best of gucci thing sitting on my hard drive which I've been meaning to give a listen and I'll do so with yer points in mind

some dudes just have good voices for hooks. method man was by far the best w/ that in wu. 50 def had it -- i remember some old ilx post (spizzazzz post?) about how 50 was the king of the ... microhook? was that it? drake is actually fairly good w/ this too -- i think his voice is used to good effect in 'off that.' gucci totally has this, one trae track i dug this year (rich boy kinda ruined it tho) was "wrist out the window" which just had this loop of gucci going 'my money long as a limo / just to show off i put my wrist out the window', 1st time i noticed his voice being used for another artist's hook that i can think of & i remember thinking how right it seemed

u forgot "rollin rollin rollin, we ain't slept in weeks"

"wrist out the window" is a good rich boy & gucci track from last year, you bum

it's from that rich boy tape 'bigger than the mayor'

his verse on it is dumb. i heard it on a trae tape, never heard all of 'bigger than the mayor'

yeah i don't really remember any details of the song tbh, you're probably right

'wrist out the window' is a monster of a track but i really like rich boy so...

u ain't seen my mistress?
look at my bitch's bitch
even her wrist sick

tho gucci has a lot to do with the fact that when i hear these mixtapes tracks nowadays i just assume they are original joints

http://www.zshare.net/audio/732201208d047805/

this is dope -- love the beat too

fuckin love that

(((d-_-b)))

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7338892867037076/

kind of looking forward to seeing how desperate deej's gucci withdrawal will get over the next 9 months

oh nvm i thought he was crying about that on this thread

(((d-_-b)))

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7338892867037076/

― jizzchin (J0rdan S.), Sunday, March 7, 2010 4:31 AM (Yesterday)

^^^

surely the point of order to take from transposing that tim quote onto gucci wrt 'wasted' and 'lemonade' (besides the obvious "artists generally do better at what they're good at and what their fanbase is established on rather than abruptly switching up 4 the masses" truism) isn't in further lauding gucci for some kind of grand deliberate lyrical pop intensification so much as it is in appreciating how much better those particular beats are at facilitating his unchanging gucciness for everyone to immediately enjoy - 'wasted's martial focus freeing up a stage for looseness of content and delivery, 'lemonade's cheerful morbid obesity for cartoonish retail micromonotony.