In praise of Freddie Gibbs

He might could be my favourite pure gangsta rapper ever to fuckin’ breathe.

I’ve been meaning to write something in praise of Freddie Gibbs, who is the most famous and popular rapper ever to emerge from the state of Indiana in the American Midwest, and whom I’ve been listening to avidly since roughly the year 2009. Gibbs is one of my favourite rappers of all time – a highly intelligent, perceptive, and emotive gangsta rapper with a gully-ass voice, an extremely technically precise and accomplished Gatling-gun flow, and a knack for making great rap songs of many different varieties and for murdering virtually any beat, regardless of subgenre or regional sound. In the 12 years since I was first introduced to his music, I’ve heard him flex on beats by producers as gifted as Ski, DJ Burn One, Speakerbomb, The Block Beattaz, Kaytranada, Maja 7th, SMKA, Kno, and Big K.R.I.T., and he’s shone hard next to some of the greatest rappers in the history of the artform – alongside his regular collaborators Pill (and again), Currensy, and Mikkey Halsted (all of whom he has great chemistry with), among the royalty he’s made great songs with are Nas, Scarface, Black Thought, Raekwon (and again), Bun B (and again), E-40 (and again), Mos Def (and Black Thought again!), Devin The Dude, Spice 1 (and Daz Dillinger!), Pusha T (and Killer Mike!), Krayzie Bone, Roc Marciano, Freeway, Jadakiss, Method Man, and Z-Ro, plus peers like 03 Greedo, Crooked I, Benny The Butcher, Problem (at least twice), Danny Brown (twice!), Young Thug, Phonte Coleman, and the late Jacka (twice!) and Mac Miller. A veritable murderers’ row, in short, and yet through it all, I don’t think I’ve heard him get decisively outrapped even once. Mac Miller’s scene-stealing verse on the posse cut that closes Piñata, the first of Gibbs’ two acclaimed albums with the producer Madlib, is the lone exception.

My favourite project of his is the 2009 mixtape Midwest Gangsta Boxframe Cadillac Muzik (the title is properly rendered as one word, not five), which I regard as a classic and a masterpiece, one of the 20 or so best albums in rap history – it contains at least five of the Gibbs songs I most treasure (“Boxframe Cadillac”, “County Bounce”, “Murda On My Mind”, the slightly filthy but thoroughly jammin’ “Bussdown”, and the heartwrenching “One Mo’ Time”, plus “Womb 2 The Tomb” which I linked to earlier.) But there are numerous other Gibbs songs, from “Best Friend” to “Illegal” to “On My Own” to “Crushin’ Feelin’s” to “Kane Train” to “Big Boss Rabbit” to “Shitsville” to “4681 Broadway”, that stay in my perpetual rotation too. I remember reading an early interview in which he cited as influences and favourites artists as diverse as Scarface, Andre 3000, De La Soul, Twista, Noreaga, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Juvenile, and I think he’s done a splendid job of honouring the legacy of the greats while carving out his own artistically rich lane, and he has definitely inspired my own music. To make the case, here is a YouTube playlist that has almost all my favourite songs he’s ever done on it.

(Relatively few of the songs on this playlist are from his albums with Madlib and Alchemist, even though those albums are very acclaimed and one of them was even nominated for the Grammy for Best Rap Album, because I subjectively don’t particularly care for those two producers – their beats are very artful on the level of texture, but their drums don’t thwack hard enough, and I think Gibbs is under the mistaken apprehension that their choice to eschew hard-hitting “boom bap” drums makes their beats more sophisticated, but I think it’s very much the wrong call artistically. But that’s just a personal aesthetic tic.)

It is true that Gibbs is a flawed figure. He is, for the most part, an unreconstructed gangsta rap hardhead, so those of you who don’t like gangsta rap will probably want to ignore his music completely. He also has some weird personal views – he is opposed to the coronavirus vaccines, and he has imputed that a former music business associate of his named Joe “3H” Weinberger mistreated him and cheated him out of money for reasons that had to do with 3H being Jewish. He also infamously took the side of Jay-Z in the latter’s dispute with Colin Kaepernick over the question of whether it’s permissible for Black athletes to “take the knee” during the American national anthem at games, and I think Gibbs and Jay-Z are firmly in the wrong on that issue.

But through it all, I’m a massive fan of the man. I really do think he’s one of the dopest rappers ever, and I’ve seen him live twice (he’s fantastic live) and had a wonderful time in his company when I briefly met him at one of those shows. I gave him my copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ masterful treatise on anti-Black violence, Between The World and Me – I wonder if he read it!

Gibbs is a flawed human being, but to quote what the animation scholars Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald said about (of all personages) Bugs Bunny, he is always “entirely three-dimensional in his emotional makeup”, and I find him worth following and believing in because of it. He’s the truth! I’d love to make a song with him someday!