Worth It in 2011: #40 - Gucci Mane

Surfing In Babylon celebrates The Year In Music with our typical blend of largesse and hubris! You're welcome. Like you, I'm concerned about these year-end best-ofs appearing earlier and earlier each year; like you, I haven't fully absorbed the new Buraka Som Sistema CONCEPT ALBUM yet. Here's my excuses for jumping the gun:

1. I've heard a lot of stuff this year -- not as much as most people who write about music for a living, and not as much as plenty of folks who write about music for kicks, but more than I've ever heard in any other year of my life. SO.... this evolving list may point out things YOU'D like that you'd otherwise have missed, thus enabling you to formulate more perfect year-end lists of your own.

2. I don't have all the time in the world! Especially around Christmas. As one of the local PTO officials put it when someone challenged the date of our local Scrapbooking Event, "I have to schedule this when it works for ME."

3. This'll probably wind up including more than 40 albums, because I'll wind up inserting other things I hear in the meantime. Like the new Buraka Som Sistema CONCEPT ALBUM.

4. I'm not going to put much effort into it.

I'm not sure how that last one's a point in my favor, but we'll see. In the meantime, may I direct you to:

#40
Gucci Mane
The Return of Mr. Zone 6
(a mixtape on Warner Bros., however that happens)


Still have a sneaking suspicion I liked this so much because I missed the Waka Flocka Flame boat last year. (I spent a delightful January day blasting Flockaveli, watching Black Swan, reading Proust, and debasing myself and others with bizarre psychosexual mind games.) (PTO holla!) Gucci's not as magnetic as Waka, who still shows up on a couple trax here, and these beats lack all that crazy Waka barking in the background -- a song like "Reckless" is anything but. But there still comes a time in every Gucci song when feel like I'm floating away on a sea of midtempo -- "bliss"? Maybe not, because in "bliss" women are generally loved and respected as equals, but you get the idea. It's like a form of hypnosis or sedative: repetitive and soothing, allowing you to notice enough details and idiosyncrasies to maintain interest, and a relief when you contrast your Gucci-filled life to the Gucci-less world that existed before the music started playing. Or when you look up and suddenly realize you're operating a car.

You should listen to "This Is What I Do", ft. Waka.

Way better than Tyler the Creator's Goblin.