A-Team horns blast through the beginning of this beat and you’re like “Just another Alchemist almost-banger on some blissed-out blaxploitation shit…”, only it’s not because it’s taken over by sparks of something less analog: the theme from Halloween sent through Terry Riley synths (or the Phantom of the Opera drunk on Vault energy soda), pieces of Percolator drums, digital fuzz clipping in and out, and a chunk of very rigid and unfunky flickering back and forth bass. Where did this come from? This isn’t totally from left-field or anything but it’s pretty nuts.
Alchemist’s always had this kind of shit in him, but he’s never gone this far in sort of kind of rejecting his “style”, even if the rejection lasts only until Prodigy needs some more middling soul-bangers–although “Death Wish” on Jada’s album was on some other shit too.
“That’ll Work” though is cool because it’s made-up of the same elements that’ll be on the next Dilated Peoples album just stretched-out or chopped-up to a very different end. There’s a funk bassline, it’s just been destroyed and reorganized to stutter and flip-out instead of glide along…there’s patches of some ethereal probably-from-an-Italian-movie-OST vocals, just it comes in for like a quarter of a second–in only one of the speakers–and then trips out of the way. Even the sexy moans and hook might have their origins on one of those “Porno Sounds” break records.
Alchemist’s beat sounds like an attempt to match the menace and energy of Southern rap using the New York rap tools to do so. Or flashback to a time when style and sub-sub regional genres didn’t have to be protective and properly defined and wrapped up inside themselves and this could just be an early 90s Memphis or Bronx record.
Rapping-wise too, Three-Six and Juvenile are slightly out of their comfort zone, but out of it enough to where they’re challenged and interesting shit happens, not so far out that they’re no longer doing them. Juvie especially…maybe it’s that ficky-ficky quarter of a bassline that’s like a Dilla/Busta joint but it’s got that same kind of weird feel, but it’s Juvenile and Alchemist which makes a lot less sense.
Sometimes, just because you got enthusiasm for the Willy Wonka boom-bap blip of “We Gotem” or the blissed-out kinda glory of “Stunt” or the entire Gucci Land mixtape you physically bought in a store a few weeks ago in Baltimore, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t just concede to someone who’s said it better. But then, Dantheman’s video (or half a video) for “I’m Back Bitch” shows-up and it’s Gucci rapping gloriously, looking glorious-er, but a little desolate and sad (car in an empty Big Lots parking lot type sad) and it’s hard to keep quiet.
His power as a rapper comes from the build-up of songs and verses. The excitement and joy of rapping all the time on hundreds of tracks doesn’t have to be super-explicit–that he’s doing it is enough–or even joyful and so, there aren’t really highlights or let’s just say, there aren’t these like inarguable stand-outs. Gucci’s putting the same effort forward all the time and he’s mining the same territory, twirling the same ideas and jokes and threats around and around sometimes falling on something deeper or heavier but when he does, it’s in the same wizened jokey drawl. He’s having fun and if you want to join in go ahead, he doesn’t seem to really care but you get the sense that inside, he really cares.
There’s a quieter, more modest sense of style and if you must say it, swagger too. This is why in many ways he’s been met with even more opposition and downright denial that he’s a significant figure in rap: He upsets your expectations of a rapper and rap star by being ordinarily irregular. He revels in the minor joys of self-expression, like your your accountant wearing NIKEs or the guy at Sheetz with a big-ass earring or your redneck neighbor with those truck balls.
And what better way to represent Gucci’s disinterest in the world than to stick an iced-out Gucci Mane in a tour van in the middle of an empty parking lot rapping to a hand-held camera as his buddies smoke and fart around on a laptop around him? Director Dantheman’s perhaps best known for Prodigy’s “Mac 10 Handle” video and in a lot of ways, “I’m Back Bitch” is as just as isolated and dark, just not so obvious about it. This is the plurality of emotions, the pleasure and pain, and all that, hip-hop does best.
Back in Wax Poetics #32, the Egyptian Lover mentioned his plan to release twelve 12-inches in 2009–one for every month of the year. While that hasn’t exactly happened, it didn’t feel like total un-real talk in the interview because the beauty of electro and derivations of that music is its carpenter-ish core, which allows, kinda even demands, and actually rewards, quick, worker-bee style production.
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