Profiles in Good - Freddie Gibbs

Stories like this are why only musicians with the business acumen of a flying squirrel sign to major labels.

Freddie Gibbs is a rapper. In fact, he is a very good rapper. He is from Gary, Indiana, former home of one Michael Jackson, and, if you listen to Freddie Gibbs tell it, current home of many murderous drug dealers. In fact, according to his music he is the murderous-est and drug-dealer-est of all of these fellows. He also hates the government and is worried that he might have some illegitimate children that no one has told him about.

He gained renown off the strength of a bunch of songs he made about the very topics of drug/woman slingin’, so it’s only natural that after signing to Interscope, he would record lots more songs about being a murderous pimp/drug dealer. However, Interscope failed to see this logic, so when he turned in two albums’ worth of such songs, they were all like, “Freddie Gibbs, we know that we signed you to our label because of how good you are at making songs about killing people, but we have had enough of that. Please make some songs about how many nice things you have.”

Freddie heard this criticism, took it to heart, and then went and hooked up with Polow da Don for “What It B Like,” which I can only assume was meant to be his first single, and is about how many nice things Mr. Gibbs has only in that he offhandedly mentions owning both an ‘68 Oldsmobile (as to why he would brag about this, I have no idea) as well as a Jaguar and then spends the rest of the song threatening to kill the listener and shouting out various gangs with which he is affiliated.



It might be the best song I’ve heard in a year, and keep in mind I’ve been listening to lots of Steely Dan lately.

Anyway, Interscope got really mad at Senor Gibbs and dropped him from their label, leaving him with mountains of material, so he put out three mixtapes and called it a day. Midwestgangstaboxframecadillakmuzik has a bunch of beats that are reminiscent of the keyboard-tastic stuff that characterized No Limit/Cash Money releases in the late 90’s, except the rapping is WAY better. The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs is his best release in my opinion, with a sound that evokes early Outkast if Big Boi did all of the rapping. And then you have the 80-track behemoth The Labels Tryin To Kill Me, which has the best things from the other two tapes plus a bunch of other stuff too, but since it’s his “best of” compilation it just has a bunch of minute-long verses culled from the actual songs. The point is if you like rap music you should download The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs if not all of his other mixtapes too.

Regardless, one of his main strengths as a rapper is that he possesses a lexicon of unlimited unreal terms, and I do not mean that in a math-type sense. Here are a few examples of his magical way with made-up words:

Zip = Sellable amount of marijuana

Fuity = Marijuana

Len Bias = Cocaine (this is not a term rooted in any degree of sensitivity)

Cock = A female prostitute, because that makes sense

Dick Cheney = To shoot someone in the face

Burner = Gun, probably used for the purpose of Dick Cheneying someone

Anyway, there are more, but I have a paper due tomorrow so it's whatever.