Album of the year #13: Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Bandana - HipHop

Album of the year #13: Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Bandana
Daily Discussion Thread 01/13/2020
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Album of the year #13: Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Bandana

Posted: 13 Jan 2020 09:01 AM PST

Artist: Freddie Gibbs & Madlib

Album: Bandana

Listen:

YouTube

Spotify

Apple Music

Background

Freddie gibbs is a 37 years-old rapper from Gary, Indiana.

He was signed to Interscope early in his career then signed to Young Jeezy's CTE label, which he then left after a beef with him, you can learn more about it through the song Real which is targeted at Jeezy. He went independant for a while and then recently signed to RCA Records right before dropping Bandana.

After years of solid album/mixtapes with moderate success, Freddie Gibbs dropped Thuggin EP with Madlib as a producer. The EP served as a preview for what would become his most critically acclaimed album : Piñata. The title track, "Thuggin" is mostly what set-up the hype for the album because of how good and unique it sounds, this was the first time we heard someone doing drug/mafioso rap over a Madlib beat and this song is still considered one of the best of the album even though it came out 2 years before its release.

For those who have never heard of Freddie Gibbs, his rap-style is mostly pretty fast-paced, cadence heavy, street related drug talk. There is hardly any beat that this dude didn't rap over, from classic hip-hop, to Trap to even EDM and he's clearly one of the hardest working rapper of his generation, with pretty much at least a project every year for the past 10+ years. His 3 biggest influences to me are Scarface, Z-Ro and Krayzie Bone.

Piñata is in my opinion, one of the best hip-hop albums of the 2010s, him and Madlib made an outstanding duo that made him sound a lot more focused and concised that he has ever been. The album was so good that Piñata became the entry point for Freddie's discography to a lot of people and even if the rest of his discography is great (BFK, Pronto EP, YOL2 that I can't recommend enough..and many more), I still see a lot of people on the sub that only heard this album and Bandana and skipped the rest which is a shame. Freddie's rapping coupled with Madlib's creative sample chopping made this album sound timeless, you could listen to it and think it's a 90s classic and I wouldn't be surprised, this is a top tier mafioso rap project to me and a great intro to what Freddie is capable of.

After seeing the critical acclaim that Piñata received, Freddie Gibbs and Madlib decided to drop a sequel called Bandana, which was released June 28th, 2019.

Review

While I don't like to compare the two because of how high he set the bar on Piñata, I know it's what the people are going to talk about on here so i'd rather give my opinion on it first. I feel like Bandana is as good as a follow-up as it could be and that it's unfair to really compare the two because first, Bandana wouldn't exist without Piñata obviously and second, hearing Freddie Gibbs and Madlib for the first time on Piñata is a feeling that won't ever be replicated unless maybe Bandana was your entry point to Freddie Gibbs, and so I feel like there will always be a bias towards the first opus you heard if that makes sense.

Contrary to "Scarface" which set the tone for a dark, raw street album, "Freestyle Sh!t" sounds like a coming home track. The warning at the start means one thing : Freddie Gibbs is ready to take over and he wastes no time as we can see with his very first lyrics on the project :

I want it all, n*gga, all leather

25th and Jackson, I'm back in action like Carl Weathers

Tryna beat the Rocky like Carl Weathers

Trap boy Kane, I Clubber Lang Sylvester

Crack cocaine, I was my own investor

Could I do this shit independent? That was my only question

Freddie Gibbs on Piñata made it a point to make it sound more local and modest; a story of his life on the streets having to hustle to survive. In contrast Bandana is considerably more ambitious, more grandiose. He said it himself : he wants it all.

With chanting horns, and more political tracks like "Education", Freddie has moved from addicts smoking crack in his music videos, to popping champagne bottles in the mountains, representing a clear evolution from where we left off on Piñata...It can even be seen in the album cover, we left the streets and the park benches we see in Piñata and wee see Quas riding his Zebra on top of a post-apocalyptic Hollywood, ready to take over the industry with Freddie Gibbs's rise in popularity since the Piñata release.

The horns and the numerous Rocky references to open the track makes "Freestyle Sh!t" sound like a triumphant return after Piñata, reminiscent of a boxer's entrance song, in a sense. Freddie Gibbs is back and it kinda feels like he knows that not everyone followed his music from Piñata to today because most of his fanbase would know that, outside of his jail sentence that was rather short-lived, 2016 was the only year during that 5 year period where he hasn't dropped a solo project.

I don't think doing a track-by-track analysis would be too interesting since the album isn't all that conceptual and is more about Freddie Gibbs talking about different topics over Madlib's production and for those who have yet to listen to it, I don't think a lyrical analysis would do the album enough justice as Freddie's flow and Madlib's beat switches are really what makes this album great overall. I'm pausing this write-up again to encourage you to dig more into Freddie Gibbs's discography, dude has interesting shit in pretty much anything of his discography and albums like YOL2 or BFK are criminally overlooked. He has a LOT more great shit than just his collabs with Madlib, some of my favorite songs from him like "Andrea" or Pronto don't sound like anything on Piñata/Bandana.

Where Bandana shines compared to Piñata is that, like Freddie Gibbs himself said in an interview, Madlib actually catered his sound to Freddie Gibbs on this album and tried to match his energy rather than him just making a great but un-personal beat and having Freddie Gibbs rap over it like they did on their last collab. Madlib experiments on this album with his first ever trap beat on "Half Manne Half Cocaine" which was very surprising on first listen, even though I feel that, after the surprise factor drops off, the execution kinda sticks like a sore thumb when you're used to hearing Freddie Gibbs rap over much harder-knockin and better mixed trap beat. Situations is a much better attempt at a modern beat from Madlib to me.

Madlib is not alone in his experimentation on Bandana, with Freddie singing quite a bit more than we've heard on previous efforts. His first experience with singing on a track dates back to "Careless", off Shadow of A Doubt which followed Piñata. He has had a few tracks he tried to sing on, however he was mostly fucking around and while it was hilarious, like the Freddie rollout video or Now & Later Gators", I was wondering if he would make another track where he really tried to sing again and I was NOT expecting him to do it twice over Madlib beats. You can hear him sing on "Situations" and "Gat Damn" for essentially the whole track, as well as the hook on "Soul Right", which might be the best out of the 3.

This album is running for 14 tracks discarding the intro but the 4 beat switches (5 counting the outro) / changes of cadence like Situations make it feel like a lot more. This is one of the strongest points about the album to me because it keeps you on your toes, brings a lot of replay value and can completely change your perspective of a track. I wasn't the biggest fan of "Flat Tummy Tea"'s beat at first but i'm replaying this song way more now just to hear what it builds up to.

There isn't a lot of features on this album but I don't think there is a single miss out of these 5 and if you're a Freddie Gibbs fan, you are glad to see an album that isn't bloated with features like ESGN was.

He said on numerous interviews that artists like Migos vaulted features he has with them because they were getting outshined and you can see that Freddie isn't afraid of competition with the type of people he brings on there. Freddie Gibbs actually got outperformed by every feature he brung on there (not counting Killer Mike who only did a hook) and I think it's very respectable from him to bring out top tier rappers like Mos Def or Black Thought to convey a message on a song better than he could.

A lot of people seem to say that Pusha T's feature was the standout verse of the album but I actually think that Anderson Paak completely owned the show on "Giannis" and made it his song as soon as he came in :

'Caine all in the blood

Shots to the brain, Snow on tha Bluff

Calls for a truce, but truce came with snubs

Bodies hit the pavement, money came for months

I also think that outside of one specific line, Freddie Gibbs verse on "Palmolive" wasn't that far from Push quality-wise. Mos Def's verse was very good too and I loved the overall motive each rapper repeated in Education :

I may not be here

I'm feelin' like I might just leave before I start a fire or a fight

I kind of see it as a way to say that the pressure put on black kids causes them to either flee the system or "come out crazy" like Mos said at the start of his verse. Wasn't expecting that deep of a suggest matter on a Freddie Gibbs album to be honest.

To stay as objective as possible even though I love this album, I don't think this is the best project Freddie Gibbs has lyrically and I feel like him dropping so many projects between the two collabs for sure made him "waste" great content on projects than weren't as ambitious / under the spotlight like Bandana was. Songs like "Colors" or "Willie Lloyd" are great performances from him that could've made it on the album and he kept his introspective content a bit short because he adressed it already through tracks like "Homesick" or "Freddie Gordy". The mixing seems off at times, the drums are mixed a bit too high at times, there is a vinyl-type filter on some songs that took me a while to get over and the vocal mixing on Education is absolutely awful, I actually couldn't hear Black Thought when I listened to the album with my moderately-cheap ear plugs.

I also feel like Freddie Gibbs fell a bit short next to rappers like Mos Def because political-lyricism simply isn't his lane and even though his flow is great, his content sounds kinda hollow next to him and Black Thought on "Education". His takes on vaccinations make him very hard to take seriously as a intellectual in my opinion but I'll keep that topic for later in this write-up.

Freddie Gibbs overall cadence on this is absolutely nuts, I was scared he would suffer from clumsy fast-paced rap flows like he did on tracks like "Dear Maria" off of YOL2 but far from it, even if this might not have have as many quotables as he had on Fetti or Piñata this might be the best he ever sounded delivery-wise :

Pouring up, foreigned up, three bricks, I'm a hundred up

Jack a pussy, blow his pack, that's how you fuck the summer up

Doesn't read as something that impressive lyrically but his overall flow and cadence through the beat switch of "Fake Names" is absolute perfection. That doesn't mean that Freddie Gibbs lyrics are contentless neither, he has a lot of quotables on there like the opening bars of "Flat Tummy Tea" :

I beat the pot like Joseph beat Mike and Jermaine

One came out light, one came out dark but they smokin' the same

Freddie Gibbs's comedic presence is still as present as it was on Piñata, with the skits like the end of Situations or the music videos for "Gat Damn" or "Half Manne Half Cocaine". Freddie Gibbs made a name for himself on instagram for his memes and mostly VERY NSFW stories and I had to bring that up somewhere as it birthed so many running jokes inside his community. He has these quick one-liners that has nothing to do with the songs and are just hilarious like on Cataracts :

Turkey bacon, bitch, I like my toast buttered on both sides

This album has so many layers to it, you go from dark and nightmarish tracks like "Half Manne Half Cocaine's" second half to odd melody-lacking beats like "Massage seats", soulful with "Practice", intense like "Fake Names" or "Soul Right"... While Piñata marks me as a winter-ish album, Bandana strikes me as a lot warmer, tracks like "Giannis", "Cataracts" or "Crime Pays" feels light, summery, almost funky.

The only thing missing would be a heavy 808 track or two and it would be the perfect introduction to Freddie Gibbs's world and what he amounted to after all these years. He clearly showed his range on it and outside autotune, I can't think of something he didn't try and did great at in hip-hop. My favorites tracks would be "Fake Names", "Cataracts" and "Pamolive", with "Practice" having the overall best beat and ranking higher every listen. Only tracks I don't really play would be "Gat Damn", "Massage Seats" and "Soul Right" and I don't hate them at all.

The album sold 17k first week with 7k pure sales, which is the highest Freddie Gibbs ever sold, and if you follow Freddie Gibbs on social media, especially instagram, you can see that he promoted this project more than any project he did in the past. He even came up with a fake add for a "Flat Tummy Tea" to announce his single of the same name, he knew he would be clowned for it on social media and used that attention to drop his single the next day. This is honestly very smart marketing and it's cool to see how seriously he takes his name being seen out here this avanced in his career. Note that the album leaked beforehand so he probably lost a bit of sales.

During Bandana's rollout, Freddie Gibbs announced that his collaboration will Madlib will have one more episode with Montana, which release date has yet to be announced.

Controversy

With Bandana and some of his recent IG stories, Freddie Gibbs has been under some controversy and I would like to adress it first because I knew this was gonna be brung up in this thread.

The main controversial point is his takes on vaccination. Prior to Bandana being released, Freddie Gibbs posted a LOT of snippets of the album through snapchat/instagram, one of them was the still unreleased "John Gotti Karate" which included this line :

These black babies getting injected with this mercury serum

I got a son i'm not letting these needles get near him

He repeats the same sentiment on Palmolive :

Fuck your poison keep your vaccines off us

I was wondering as why he would think that and I have two thinkings points to bring up :

The first one is this Breakfast club interview where you can see Freddie Gibbs in his lawyer after the YOL2 debacle. For those who aren't aware, Freddie Gibbs got arrested in France while shooting the music video for "Lay Back" (yes, i'm plugging my country because that song is amazing) because he was accused to have sexually abused a girl during his tour, he was sent to jail in Austria and from the rapping in YOL2, he was wrongly accused and his homeboys who abused the girl left him to rot in prison. His lawyer seems shady as fuck if you're asking me but he seems to have immense respect in him because he basically saved his life and so he seems to trust him enough to share his lawyer's anti-vaxx opinions because of that and not second guess it.
The second one is that well..Freddie Gibbs is kind of an old-fashion dumbass lol. Dude said that being a male rape victim was being pussy, he's been having a lot of terrible opinions/takes..He shouldn't be an example to follow. He's a great rapper to me but he's never been inspirational in his lifestyle/way of living, he seems mysoginitic with a very dated sense of masculinity and kind of prone to paraonia, which the latter could be understandable as a black man in America as I don't fit that criteria and can't really testify on this. Freddie Gibbs is a great artist in my eyes but I don't get down with most of his opinions and his way of living couldn't be further from mine.

I'm being devil's advocate on that part because I knew this needed to be adressed and I wanted to understand where his thought process came from, I OBVIOUSLY DISAGREE WITH IT, Anti-vaxxing is a dangerous thing and me liking Freddie Gibbs doesn't mean I agree with it, lets state the obvious here.

Favorite Lyrics by /u/dadouks

2014, addicted to lean, I was depressed as fuck

Duckin' shots and wonderin' if my own niggas set me up

And if they knock me down, I wonder would one of my niggas help me up?

"Cataracts."

Pay for your funeral, get your shit arranged

Kiss your wife and say, "You were solid," then go piss on your grave

Half Manne Half Cocaine

Squad, diamonds make haters stay on the job

Keepin' a baby .380 with me like Khaled stay with Asahd

[...]

Real G's move in silence like Giannis

"Giannis"

I changed it up, I pray the streets don't take what's left of me

Drugs for the free, soul sold separately

"Education."

It's Mr. Clean, Pine-Sol, all Palmolive (Yeah)

These niggas don't know how hard you ridin' for they ass 'til you park it (Skrrt)

In 1998, I sold a Glock 19 chopper

2018, I'm finna reclaim my fucking time and cop the Rollie flooded

Maxine Waters,

"Palmolive."

Favorite Lyrics from features

My coke hand is still sketchin' out my memoirs

[...]

Way more chemical than political

PTSD from what I weighed on the digital

It was snowfall and Reagan gave me the visual

Obama opened his doors knowing I was a criminal

Pusha T on "Palmolive."

The jail overcrowded, they emptied out the school

[...]

Where is the sky in upside down land?

That question is hard if you can't see the stars

I may not be here

I'm feelin' like I might just leave before I start a fire or a fight

Or both, but nah, son, I couldn't just chill

Everybody gigglin', that kid was gettin' killed

Mos Def on "Education."

Couldn't see who was firin' shots, the shooter got low

And left a burnin' cross on the lawn just like a pothole

[...]

If you wanna play blind, just look straight into the light

Black Thought on "Education."

Ice will come with the fame

Flowers cover the grave

Power, love, and loyalty

Wash me clean today

Anderson Paak on "Giannis."

Talking Points

Favorite songs/lyrics from that album?
How do you feel sequals should be made? Should they rehash the same formula or should they try to differ from it as much as possible? How do you think they did on Bandana?
Piñata or Bandana, pick one, why?
Where do this rank up in Freddie Gibbs discography in your opinion?
How do you feel about beat switches in general? Those in the album? Do you think beat switches might become a cheap tactic to make songs better?
What features would you want to hear from Montana?
Can you be a fan of an artist even if you think some of the opinions he voiced were immoral? Are you willing to separate the man from the artist if you like his music enough ?

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Daily Discussion Thread 01/13/2020

Posted: 13 Jan 2020 11:44 AM PST

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