Freddie Gibbs You Only Live 2ice Album Review

I know this album came out a while ago, but I had this thing laying around that my editor rejected because of bad timing. So here it is, in way worse timing for y'all. Check it.

Freddie Gibbs has been one of my favorite rappers for a long time now, his Madlib produced album “Piñata” is still one of the albums I enjoy the most and not a week goes by without me bumping at least Shame, Knicks, Thugging and High, so when news broke out that he had been encarcerated and accused of rape, my first thought was “oh man, I hope that doesn’t delay the release of Bandana”, I know that sounds selfish, but my second thought was “oh man, I hope he didn’t really rape somebody”, but to be perfectly honest, my third thought was “in case he actually did it, tho, I hope Austrian prisons have decent recording equipment and he can just Gucci Mane it”. A couple months later, he gets acquitted of all charges and then on March 31st he drops the first of an installment of three albums he managed to write while being locked up.

The album kicks off with 20 Karat Jesus, arguably two great songs and some modern preaching packed into a 5 minute track. It starts as a braggadocio of Kane’s place in the crack game and ends with Gibbs hilariously spreading the good word of, well, himself. “It’s your boy Jesus, man. Yes, my nigga, Jesus is your homeboy.”

Can you like half a song? I like half of Crushed Glass. I like the fuck out of half of it, to be precise, but the hook is simply weak. I've never been a fan of singy-lady-driven-hooks with lyrics that are loosely related to the rest of the song, so maybe I'm biased, but I really like the other half a lot. Freddie’s flow on the verses is crazy, and the beat is like a very thick slice of spam meat, which makes me hate the hook almost twice as much, in the way that a bad bumper sticker is ok on a Prius but unacceptable on a Lamborghini.

Throughout the album, Gibbs dissects the trap game from the perspective of a grown man, the maturity on his bars is that of someone who just spent a month in jail, away from his daughter and fiancé with nothing to do but think and write. On Alexys he reminisces on his life as a dope pusher and takes a trip down drug-history-lane, starting with tenth grade when he first tasted cocaine, and shortly after started cooking crack and “peddled pain to these poor folks”.

Then comes Andrea, a slow jam about addiction that tastes like a big chunk of brisket smothered in thick prune gravy (let me know when I go too far with the food analogies, I just found out about Anthony Bourdain), also not too sold on the singy Gibbs hook though, would love to hear it without that weak vocoder on it, but the rest is pristine.

Phone Lit is ushery at first and on the hooks (the good usher) but the verse is Gibbs at his purest. He gives you a glimpse of what turning on your phone really means after you’ve been locked up for a month without it.

Homesick is brutal. First he raps about coming home after spending one month in a jail cell in Europe because of a situation one of his closest friends got him into, then coming home expecting to be welcomed back in style but finding that this fair-weather friend won’t even pick up the phone no more, trying to distance himself from the whole thing. It's a coming of age song, a story that leads to the epiphany he had while being locked up; “that’s when I realized I had to start living for my child and not my niggas” While the album fades out, he tells us about being on the inside with nothing to read “guards took me to the library, all the books was in German and shit, almost broke me down” then thanks his girl Erica Dickerson for flying out there, buying him some books and holding him down. “I’m back. And I ain’t going anywhere this time”. A single tear rolls down my grown ass man’s face as the sound of Freddie stepping out of the booth marks the end of the album and I click repeat.