Review Summary: dude check this guy out. ITS OKAY HE'S NOT A GENERIC MIXTAPE RAPPER, THIS GUY IS SICK.
The internet has made self-editing near impossible, and while increasing the library of music hugely, the quality of said library has been on the decline. This affects every single genre, but hip-hop seems to take it the hardest, as the game has now been brought back to the mixtape world, which can now be distributed freely virally. The real, hard working artistic touch of artists is largely disappearing quickly. However, even in modern days of these here internet sites, there are still plenty of artists who still go the long haul and produce hard music with that artistic effort. Freddie Gibbs, an MC from the unusual hip hop city of Gary, Indiana, displays some realness with one of his most notable mixtapes, The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs, and proves that despite the internet fast life does create a lot more filler, there are still a lot of gold MCs out there.
Many bloggers would claim Freddie is the second coming of Pac. Problem is, those bloggers have probably never heard Pac, but Freddie Gibbs does share one thing in common with the legend; he discuss street life and the struggles of it. Gibbs goes into details of these trials, which a lot of underground artists do, but what he manages to do as well is come up with a truly tight flow. Many rappers leave a bit too much air on the beat for their struggle to really be believable, but Gibbs strangles the beat, suffocating the drum beat hard enough for one to feel his soul. “Neverending Cycle” has Freddie ripping over 80’s pianos, looming guitars, and woozy synths that sort of mush together over the pumping drum beat, and he’s gripping enough to make you believe he’s never going to get out of this ghetto. It’s depressing, really.
Gibbs also does something that most rappers can’t do as well: he can ride over both bouncing dirty south beats, and sail over smooth, soulful samples. We get a good plate of samples of beats, anything from old school boom baps, to clickity, flaring southern synth-fests, giving us a good degree of diversity in musicality. He rarely ever swipes other peoples’ songs, but when he does a little bit of soul searching and tries to almost make the beat his own. Swiping Souls of Mischiif’s “Til ‘93” and Xzibit’s “Paparazzi”, something that usually sounds like inept theft sounds with respect to those artists. But, Freddie Gibbs knows where his beats are coming from, knows when to bounce and when to be completely serious.
Freddie Gibbs builds an entire mixtape around his solid MCing and realistic tales of the struggles of the street life over beats that support his suffocating flow. The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs doesn’t have very many highlights, but the songs that stand-out are the ones that sport a sort of ominous backdrop that suits Gibbs’ subject matter. “What It B Like” featuresringing, clanging bells that loop into each other, sounding truly ominous, and Freddie Gibbs has never sounded more at home. If Gibbs were to expand on this paranoid, portentous sound that “What It B Like” does, then we could have a classic mixtape on our hands. But as it is, this collection of sick beats that Gibbs spits over is almost as solid. Hip hoppers: look out for this dude – he’s sick.
