DG Yola/Gucci/OJ - "Tall Rims" + Gucci as a linguist
DG Yola, Gucci Mane & OJ Da Juiceman - "Tall Rims" (via DGB)
I'm posting this song so I can jump off what Noz said about Gucci and his love of language in this post. First, though: "Wonderful" is a great example of how Gucci's become one of the absolute top lyricists in all of rap. For one, you get opening rhymes of "Jacob/tomato/acres/Jamaica/Decatur" and "ordinary/canary/carry/military" — this is not standard rapping, this is the kind of lyricism Jay was doing on "It's Hot (Some Like It Hot)". People who aren't realizing/understanding this are either stigmatizing and/or just plain not paying attention. And that's before you take into account that Gucci molds the first batch of words so that they seem like natural compliments to each other, phonetically engineered to rhyme even though they very clearly aren't. Another thing about "Wonderful": the beat is wound super-tight, with these escalating pianos and mile-a-minute hi-hats, and so Gucci's verses are knotty and are packed with alliteration and internal rhymes. It would seem like he's showing off if the song wasn't so tense. A commenter on Noz's post intimated that Gucci's writing process wasn't very interesting, and of course I couldn't disagree more, and I think "Wonderful" proves why.
Now, "Tall Rims". The key portion re: Gucci and language comes halfway through his verse:
Crazy color chains and the fruity flavor Forces
Vette, Hummer, Benz, Bentley, damn I got choices
Bart Simpson chain make me feel important
H2 Hummer sittin on Charles Barkleys
Smokin on broccoli, bite look gnarly
Is it not obvious that this guy is really — with care and thought— building verses? The alliteration would go without stating except that I can't remember anyone using "fruity flavor" instead of "fruity colors", but maybe I'm forgetting some Young Dro lyrics. The rest of the verse though hits at exactly what Noz said in his post and what we talked about in our big Gucci posts. Bart Simpson, Charles Barkley, broccoli, gnarly: this is evidence of a rapper that clearly enjoys using his vocabulary to construct complex verses as well as someone who is concerned with taking an original approach to the subjects of trap-rap. Notice how he uses the word "bite" instead of something like "grill"— not only is it an unusual choice but the use of a word that starts with the letter B is purposeful after he used "broccoli".
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A quick note re OJ: I think the guy has been really tearing it up in the past 2 or 3 months (hence my embarrassing mix attempt). I never really thought of him much as a lyricist, but he's really added that dimension to his music, and lately he's been rapping with a certain force and a mean, almost arrogant, edge. His opening lines on "Tall Rims" — "Flamin hot charger/ Famous Amos dunks/ Ice water whippin/ Got me stuntin on these fucks" — are especially nasty, and to be honest it seems to me like OJ is starting to take rapping seriously now that he's catching some buzz off of Gucci and getting on magazine covers. In the XXL interview he talks about how he came up with the "aye!" ad-lib when he was just fucking around in the studio trying to come up with an identifiable ad-lib and I get the impression that he's a goofy, fun-loving guy who messed around a lot in the studio when no one was paying him any attention and that's a lot of what we heard when he first broke out earlier this year. He's stepped up to the plate or whatever, or maybe Gucci's rubbing off on him.
Labels: gucci mane, gucciwatch 09
posted by Jordan at
12:27 AM
9 Comments:
While I think of Gucci as a lyricist, I feel like it weakens your argument to use "broccoli" as an example, seeing as how it seems every rapper today is referring to their piff as broccoli, spinach, bush, etc.
Also, I can't get past most of the cookie cutter dirty south beats Zaytoven comes out with.........
This post is why I love this blog.
YES. s'GUCCI!
There is absolutely no doubt that this guy puts a lot of effort into his writing. Well either that or he's some kind of freestyling idiot savant. But I still don't much care for him, because (a) of the same objections people made to Young Dro - while I don't object whatsoever to people talking about their multi-colored car collection, jewelry, huge array of bricks, and generally applaud the fact that rap is basically the only musical genre to really take note of our consumerist lifestyles, if it's all, or 98%, of what you do, it can get very old, and one song can get indistinguishable from the next pretty quickly. Which may not matter to some people, like the sorts of people who didn't at all mind that even at his best, all Wayne ever really did was produce an endless stream of technically brilliant but totally interchangeable freestyles. But it matters to me. B, however wonderful you may think his lyrics are (and I think that wonderfulness is substantially hampered by the fact that they're mostly a series of interesting ways to talk about the size and brilliance of the diamonds on his chain), I don't much like Gucci's voice. And that may sound petty and all to you, but let's be honest, you wouldn't give a damn about these lyrics if they were being rapped by Evidence or Brother Ali or Termanology, and nor would I, because they're shrill and dull and nasal. Gucci, on the other hand, can't enunciate for shit, and as a result I only realize how good his lyrics are when you folks type them out. If all you ever heard by him was 'Hella Ones,' you might think he had an extra chromosome. If he ghostwrote for Dro, who can enunciate and has a winning tone of hauteur to his voice, I'd probably be a huge Dro fan.
Nicely done. I'm always amazed at this site's ability to articulate stuff like this - I personally find gucci's appeal incredibly hard to pin down.
Sorta in line w/ Tray's point, I do find you have to be paying close attention to decipher Gucci's lyricism. This might be a personal thing. But the guy's flow has this woozy, wave-like quality to it. There's no obvious highs or lows, it just sways like a blob, to the point where I've often felt like its just another instrument gliding alongside the beat. And this often leads to me just nodding to the beat and his vocal sounds, but missing a lot of his lyricissm. But I've learned to watch out.
Funny how all this fun writing is coming from a guy who shows the least amount of outward interest in being lyrical.
gucci hard but he rap like you type in google, its fun music though, but trap rap aint lyrical dude keep talkin bou 72 donk 8's on my hummer, ya'll ballin' we get it, im strugglin', i relate to that slaughter house or hell rell why havent they blown up
"There's no obvious highs or lows, it just sways like a blob, to the point where I've often felt like its just another instrument gliding alongside the beat."
That's exactly it, Jay, now why's that bad? And like a good instrument, if you choose to focus on the details, it suddenly opens-up in all kinds of crazy ways.
"That's exactly it, Jay, now why's that bad?"
Oh I wasn't saying it was bad at all. I was just trying to explain why I often miss out on what is obviously well-written work. If anything, I’m critiquing my laziness as a listener.
All in all, I enjoy Gucci's work but he still is very unconventional figure. There's tons of other rappers who've got fun flows and tons who write well. But this guy is kicking all sorts of deceptively lazy, ignorant sounding flows and sneaking in these great creative bits of lyricism in there. Plus, its all done in a very free-flowing, unassuming way. I'd assume someone who took this much care towards writing would try harder to get people to notice how great he was, especially considering the fact that his name is brought up a lot in these ‘southern rapper are ignant’ discussions. Even popular rappers like jay and kanye and weezy have done quite a bit to make their work a bit more accessible, to let their rhymes sink a bit better within stadiums –slowing their flow down, over enunciating, pausing after punchlines….yada yada yada. But Gucci just drops gems and never seems to look back.
Maybe we could critique him for not doing a better job of delivering these lines, but the more you listen the more obvious it is that it isn’t a flow or style he’s stuck with, it’s one that he chooses to engage. So even if its "weird" or "lazy" or "ignorant" sounding you end up developing, at the very least, some level of respect for his defiance and the confidence he has in all the seemingly weird output he's putting out there.
I should just stop. I haven't been able to properly wrap my head around this guy so I'm just rambling right now.
Jay-
Nah, I think you're basically onto something entirely. I think one reason Gucci's in this weird middle level of "is he terrible??" "is he GREAT?" is because he's so into himself and his rhymes. I also think he's hard to write about, which is why he hasn't fully moved into the world of music blogs quite as quick as say, Lil Wayne.
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