Freddie Gibbs
$oul $old $eparately

LA RECENSIONE

"Nowadays, young people imagine that money is everything, and when they grow older, they know it is."

Among the subgenres offered by rap, it is interesting for me, a white person from the upper-middle class, to focus on the most grotesque and folkloric one, that is gangsta-rap: that unwarranted and hallucinatory sequence of macho poses, violence, misogyny, and morbid materialism are both an entertainment phenomenon (vulgar or not, the verdict is up to posterity) and a symptom of a malaise that festers in certain environments, fortunately far from my/our experience.

A movement that doesn't worry about sugarcoating language and content but rather takes them to extreme consequences. This album I'll talk about is one of the bizarre products of this toxicity.

"$oul $old $eparately", Freddie Gibbs' major debut, is a polychromatic and opulent piece of that post-gangsta aesthetic focused on the dramatic (and self-referential) pulp narrative that takes shape in an outlying life scenario, where legality and illegality inevitably blur. Thus, a sort of Scorsesean festival (if we want to refer to one of his classics, we could mention "Casino") translated into a dimension of musical hyper-production, among blatantly baroque arrangements and unreleased collaborations (there are 25 beatmakers involved and 10 guests included in the tracklist). An authentic colossus in which every extra is placed in the right spot, and despite the rich variety, it doesn't give up that underlying organicity, presenting itself as a concrete and thoughtful work.

The absolute protagonist of this gargantuan and sumptuous criminal fresco, however, is always him, Freddie's smooth and compelling flow, here more than ever in all his eccentric eclecticism: clean and tidy, the mc's rap glides with enviable grace over the kaleidoscopic musical carpet of the album, creating a notable synergy both with the muddier sounds and the more refined ones.

In short, it's a delicate ecosystem that Gibbs offers, where balance reigns supreme and all elements, positioned with mathematical precision, highlight its geometric ecstasy.

Unmissable.