Gucci Mane, as a rapper at least, seems to thrive off other artist’s energies. Since his imprisonment in 2009, which arguably kick-started the greatest mixtape run of his career thus far, he’s ensured to keep his projects swamped in guests, recruiting everyone from Marilyn Manson to T-Pain. Traditionally, though, he doesn’t mesh well with other artists on full projects. Everyone knows how abominably bad
BAYTL is, for example, but what about the very pedestrian
Ferrari Boyz with estranged protégé Waka Flocka, or
Free Bricks, his equally middling 2011 effort with a very young, inexperienced Future?
On that release, we saw a pre-
Pluto Future, one that mews rather than roars, and was largely relegated to rubbish guest verses (not his strength) rather than being allowed to flex his songwriting skills into yet another of his seemingly endless supply of hooks. 5 years on, we have
Free Bricks 2: Zone 6 Edition. The fact that there is
already a
Free Bricks 2 with Young Scooter notwithstanding, this 6 track experiment is an oddity not only because of its quickly thrown together cover art (a lot of Gucci tapes are guilty of this) but because Future, a man who just over a year ago put
DS2, sounds not only uninspired but genuinely uninterested in the music he’s making.
Sure, you could argue Future has fallen off as of late (evidenced by
Purple Reign, which was slightly above average and
EVOL, which was slightly below), but this is a whole other level of lazy. The production, contributed by Southside, Zaytoven and Metro Boomin is standard fare, sounding distinctly more
Woptober than
Monster or
Beast Mode, so Future should therefore sound even more intoxicated and punishing than normal. However, with raspy, nasally verses (think
Monster’s ‘Radical’ with none of the inebriated charm) and the sort of hooks that not even Gucci himself would write, there’s no evidence of
that Future making an appearance here.
Gucci, on the other hand, does his thing.
Everybody Looking was excellent because Gucci sounded sober and focused,
Woptober even more so because he began to experiment with his sound. Here, he’s still in that zone as he dishes out bar after bar of addictive, highly quotable one liners. His punch lines are hilarious ‘When I get a chance to vote, I’m voting for Monica Lewinsky’ and disturbing ‘I got these bitches sellin’ blood to get a fix in’ in equal measure, evidence of Gucci’s astonishing lyrical vault and clearly an example of an artist only just getting into his stride (I maintain we’ve yet to have the
Chicken Talk, the
Burrprint or the
Trap Back of this chapter of Gucci’s career).
So, while one artist flounders, the other thrives. Gucci’s delivery and lyrics here remain as complex and heady as ever, and to hear him over Zaytoven’s twinkling pianos or Southside’s eerie keys is a delight as always. Come to this tape for these things, you’ll have a great time. If you come to this tape wanting more of the Future from a year ago, however, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Indeed, I sincerely believe that’s a Future none of us are ever getting back (his best hook in the past 6 months has been on a 2 Chainz deep cut). That being said, I still have belief that
Beast Mode 16, despite its disappointing lead single, can pull out the goods, just maybe not as many as
The Return of East Atlanta Santa will hold.
