This falls squarely into my 'guilty pleasure' category. I'm kind of ambivalent about this one. I usually like Freddie Gibbs, but he's not exactly the most deep and thought provoking of hip hop artists. It almost feels refreshing to me, if for no other reason than I usually don't listen to the more hardcore style of rap. From a (more or less) outsider to this style, it's not bad, but I'm not exactly going to be blasting it at full volume. It reminds me of that slew of formulaic Houston rap albums that came out around 2005: a few tracks about money, a few derogatory tracks about women, one or two serious songs praising women or recently deceased friends laced with R&B singers singing the hook, a couple about drugs or why their city is the best city in the world, then several more about money and/or violence. (I wrote that sentence before I finished the album, and it went on to follow that formula pretty much toward the letter.) He's at his best when he reels off long, interrupted flows (Let 'Em Burn, 187 Proof), rather than short, machine-gun style bursts interspersed with feature spots (B.A.N.ned, Anything to Survive), and tracks tend to fall about when he slows down. As long as I'm admitting to guilty pleasures, I have to say, ashamedly, that the tracks I enjoyed most were the crass, murder-women-money type songs that were lyrically dull but catchy. It's terrible, but I enjoy that stuff on occasion. That said, there are several genuine tracks lamenting dire financial situations, and the stress and mental anguish that are necessarily involved, that resonated well with me. So Amazin' was just awful, though. I've never been into porno rap. By the way, what happened to Juicy J? His verse in 'Str8 Slammin'' was so bad it was hilarious.
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