8/06/11: Grant Park, Chicago, IL (Lollapalooza)
8/07/11: Crofoot Ballroom, Pontiac, MI
8/09/11: London Music Hall, London, ON
8/10/11: Phoenix Concert Theatre, Toronto, ON
8/12/11: Bangor Waterfront, Bangor, ME (Kahbang Festival)
8/13/11: Northern Lights, Clifton Park, NY
8/15/11: House of Blues, Cleveland, OH
8/16/11: Bogarts, Cincinnati, OH
8/17/11: The Pageant, St. Louis, MO
8/19/11: Red Rocks Amphitheater, Denver, CO
8/20/11: The Grand at The Complex, Salt Lake City, UT
8/21/11: Eagle River Pavillion, Eagle, ID
8/22/11: Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA
8/24/11: Montbleu Resort, South Lake Tahoe, NV
8/25/11: Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA
8/26/11: Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
8/27/11: Mesa Amphitheatre, Mesa, AZ
8/28/11: Convention Center, Albuquerque, NM
9/13/11: Orpheum Theatre, Madison, WI
9/14/11: Headliners Music Hall, Louisville, KY
9/15/11: New Earth Music Hall, Athens, GA
9/16/11: The Fillmore, Miami Beach, FL
9/18/11: The Beacham, Orlando, FL
9/20/11: Freebird Live, Jacksonville Beach, FL
9/21/11: House of Blues, New Orleans, LA
9/22/11: House of Blues, Houston, TX
9/23/11: House of Blues, Dallas, TX
9/24/11: Diamond Ballroom, Oklahoma City, OK
9/26/11: Liberty Hall, Lawrence, KS
9/27/11: The Slowdown, Omaha, NE

8/07/11-9/27/11: w/Blueprint, Evidence
8/07/11-8/28/11: w/Prof
8/07/11-8/12/11, 8/15/11/-8/28/11: w/DJ Babu

Photo by Dan Monick.

Updated July 30, 2011.

As mentioned earlier, Plug One is no more. The new website is Rapture. It’s not completely finished, but it will be where you can find me for the foreseeable future. Click on the image designed by Stephanie Gardner Ornelas to visit Rapture now.

Plug One’s archives will be kept online. At some point I will write a proper coda, perhaps when I put more time and distance between myself and it.

In the meantime, check out Rapture!

The good news is that I am starting another hip-hop webzine. It will focus on music and cultural criticism and history, with occasional interviews and news pieces, and will encompass much more than boom bap and backpack (or even hip-pop and swag). I plan to launch it next month … as soon as I can think of a title!

That’s all I can say for now. I want to take a little time and work on a final post. I hope to finish it during the next several days. In the meantime, I will empty my drawers and add some new freelance things published during the past two months. Their range should give you an idea of the new site’s direction.

So who are the ten most popular indie-rap artists right now?

I decided to find out using Rhapsody’s internal reports. The music service generates a weekly spreadsheet that ranks artists according to the amount of “plays,” or the number of times the artists’ releases are streamed. The top 100 artists for each genre and sub-genre, which number over 200, can be viewed on the Rhapsody website, including the main list, the Rap/Hip-Hop list, and the Indie Rap/Hip-Hop list.

Due to cataloging purposes, indie-rap artists aren’t only listed under the Indie Rap/Hip-Hop sub-genre. Some, such as Flying Lotus, are filed under Instrumental Rap/Hip-Hop, which is cataloged separately. Non-indie artists like Drake are listed under multiple sub-genres, including Hitmakers, Pop, Indie Rap and Contemporary R&B. As a result, his releases skew the website’s Indie Rap rankings. The “indie” term can be a catchall, it seems, not only referring to typical “backpacker” artists on independent labels but also “alternative” major label artists as well.

In order to develop a more accurate list, or at least one that’s more revealing in terms of the most popular indie-rap artists, I bypassed the website rankings and used the weekly spreadsheet.

Nearly all music databases are subject to tampering, and Rhapsody is no exception. Hundreds of musicians — mostly rappers, it seems — try to “game” the system by using software to artificially boost their “plays.” I didn’t include these guys in my list, and I won’t give them any publicity by mentioning their names, either.

I used the January 10 spreadsheet for my list. The report gives weight to artists who issued new work in the fall. However, January is the slowest music month of the year — January 11 is the first week when anything of note is released — so it’s probably the best time to calculate who enjoys the most popularity at the moment. Quibbles aside, these rankings are a great indicator.

Here’s the list. The artists’ overall rank is listed in parentheses.

Atmosphere (rank: 441)
*Flying Lotus (rank: 1081)
*Pretty Lights (rank: 1194)
*Aloe Blacc (rank: 1220)
Immortal Technique (rank: 1331)
Talib Kweli (rank: 1429)
*RJD2 (rank: 1621)
Jay Electronica (rank: 1632)
MF Doom (rank: 1730)
Jurassic 5 (rank: 1769)
Aesop Rock (rank: 2024)
*Teebs (rank: 2165)
Madlib (rank: 2261)
J Dilla (rank: 2273)
Jedi Mind Tricks (rank: 2304)

The asterisks denote electronic producers who can’t be strictly classified as hip-hoppers. Teebs and Pretty Lights, in particular, work in the beats/bass realm. Flying Lotus’ palette ranges from glitch beats to future soul styles, and RJD2 often sings over a medley funk breaks. I also asterisked Aloe Blacc, a onetime rapper who has evolved into a singer. (Rhapsody lists Neo-Soul as his main category.)

Personally, I’m impressed to see that Teebs ranked so high. His debut album, Ardour, drew solid reviews, but this ranking demonstrates that his impact is spreading beyond tastemaker appeal and blog love.

If you removed those asterisked artists, the list would look like this:

Atmosphere (rank: 441)
Immortal Technique (rank: 1331)
Talib Kweli (rank: 1429)
Jay Electronica (rank: 1632)
MF Doom (rank: 1730)
Jurassic 5 (rank: 1769)
Aesop Rock (rank: 2024)
Madlib (rank: 2261)
J Dilla (rank: 2273)
Jedi Mind Tricks (rank: 2304)

There are a few interesting results here. Immortal Technique, Aesop Rock, and Jedi Mind Tricks didn’t release albums in 2010, but their popularity remained strong enough to keep them in the top 2500 artists. (Top 2000 artists are P2, while top 5000 artists are P3.) Jurassic 5 made the list even though it broke up in 2007; its last release, a two-disc reissue of its J5 EP, came out in 2009. Jay Electronica also has a relatively high ranking even though Rhapsody only carries his two official singles, 2008′s “Exhibit A” and 2009′s “Exhibit C.”

The above two lists focus on indie-rap artists with “backpacker appeal,” and omit street rap artists entirely. (After all, this is an alternative rap site.) However, to be fair, I created a third top ten list featuring all independent rappers. Not surprisingly, the results changed quite a bit.

Tech N9ne (rank: 287)
Atmosphere (rank: 441)
E-40 (rank: 525)
Slim Thug (rank: 542)
Lecrae (rank: 711)
Mac Dre (rank: 827)
Z-Ro (rank: 837)
Afroman (rank: 1079)
Dorrough (rank: 1092)
Andre Nickatina (rank: 1094)

What’s up with Afroman? I kept out artists who are independent by necessity, and whose lasting popularity derives from their major-label releases. However, Afroman is a unique case. His biggest hit was “Because I Got High,” yet he continues to sell a lot of new material as a novelty cult artist. (One of the great things about Rhapsody is that it exposes the nooks and crannies of the music industry.)

Is it possible to create a pure indie-rap popularity sheet, one that features artists who not only have never been signed to a major, but have never had a release distributed by a major? Not anymore. It’s nearly impossible these days for a rap label to reach critical mass without joining forces with one of the Big Four majors. Atmosphere’s Rhymesayers Entertainment is carried by Warner Music Group’s Independent Label Group (ILG). Tech N9ne’s Strange Music is handled by Fontana Distribution, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. Even Stones Throw (Madlib, J Dilla) works with EMI for certain releases. (Sony Music is the fourth major.) Industry observers consider E1 Music (Slim Thug, Dorrough) an indie, but it’s such a big company that mini-major would be a more accurate classification.

The Big Four and E1′s distribution systems account for recordings by nearly every artist I’ve mentioned. The beat/bass artists noted in the first list are the exceptions. Flying Lotus is signed to Warp; and Teebs’ Ardour was issued by FlyLo’s Brainfeeder, which uses Alpha Pup as a distributor. Pretty Lights has his company, Pretty Lights Music.

And then there is Lecrae. Last fall, the Christian rapper issued his fourth album, Rehab. It’s currently listed in Rhapsody’s top 100 hip-hop albums, and his artist ranking is 711. I couldn’t find credible distribution information on his label, Reach Records. For argument’s sake, I included him on the third list ranking all independent rap artists regardless of sub-genre.

What else do these lists mean? Atmosphere is the only indie-rap artist ranked in the top 500 (which Rhapsody considers a “P1″ or priority-one artist). As I’ve written before, 2010 was a horrible year for underground hip-hop, and a series of events, from the collapse of Definitive Jux to Fat Beats shuttering its retail outlets, raised questions on whether indie-rap as it is commonly known even exists. An improved slate of releases in 2011 could quickly change that impression, though.

Meanwhile, Pretty Lights and Jay Electronica’s rising popularity suggests that it’s relatively easy to create an small indie imprint and sell digital music. (Jay Electronica, for his part, had help from Decon Records.) Without overrating Rhapsody’s influence — I am an employee there, after all — it’s clear that offering MP3s and mixtapes for streaming and even purchase on cloud-based services as well as the usual rap blogs and iTunes can make a cumulative impact.

Atmosphere photo by Dan Monick.

Last April, I announced that I would re-publish my Rhapsody reviews that fit within the Plug One format. I have long wanted to build a database of my thoughts on current hip-hop, but figured that I didn’t have enough time to review every album twice (and occasionally for a third freelance outlet, too). I hoped to solve that problem by using re-posts for minor works, and then write original reviews for the more important albums.

Unfortunately, re-posts took over the site. I haven’t published an original piece on Plug One since my TOKiMONSTA interview in August.

It has been too convenient for me to just re-post a review instead of writing a new Plug One version. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with that — after all, I wrote them! But the Rhapsody reviews are very short and, in many cases, don’t convey all of my thoughts. In some cases, they don’t even reflect my actual opinion. After all, as I wrote when I made the announcement, “these reviews tend to be more ‘service-friendly’ than my usual work.”

At this point, it’s unlikely I’ll go back and re-cover this year’s albums. Hence the flood. My current focus is on year-end material, which you’ll (hopefully!) see here in two weeks.

Rap Is Not Pop: Kid Cudi, Eminem and the Perils of Addiction

This post is inspired by a commenter on my recent piece about Eminem and his album Recovery. “Somebody’s finally on the radio talking about NOT doing drugs. That’s a good thing,” wrote Halo in the comments section. “I know that it’s tough being clean and still keeping it real.”

Why has there been so little hip-hop that addresses drug and alcohol addiction? It’s not as if rappers aren’t abusing drugs: The tabloids are filled with their exploits, whether it’s Lil Wayne serving time for drug possession, T.I. violating his probation over Ecstasy tablets and codeine syrup, or Gucci Mane reportedly heading to rehab. It appears that the days when it was only “cool” to smoke weed are a thing of the past. Yet those personal struggles rarely make it into the music.

Kid Cudi’s new album, Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager, offers a striking counterpoint to Eminem’s Recovery. While Eminem related his drug problems like he was confessing at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, Kid Cudi hides his troubles within ramblings about the pressures of fame. He celebrates his love of herb on “Marijuana” – but marijuana’s not a drug, right? However, he doesn’t address his public struggle with cocaine, save for an audible snort during “All Along.” Man on the Moon II reflects the rap community’s general ambivalence towards party favors, and how overuse of them can destroy careers – and lives.

Rare are the examples of rappers who cop to drug problems. When Coolio emerged from WC and the Maad Circle to launch a solo career, he used his criminally-underrated 1993 single “County Line” to note that he lost years to crack addiction. And after earning a sordid reputation for being a coke fiend, Cage got clean, and has used subsequent albums like 2005’s Hell’s Winter and 2009’s Depart from Me as post-rehab therapy. These and songs by others like Fatlip (“What’s Up Fatlip?) and Tech N9ne (“T9X”) fall into the realm of public confessionals.

Then there is Andre 3000, who admittedly wasted the success of OutKast’s 1994’s debut Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik on living the rap life – getting high and chasing girls – before experiencing a spiritual awakening. “In the Jacuzzi catching the Holy Ghost/ Making one woozy in the head and comatose,” he remembers on “Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre,” the closing track to OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. “I hadn’t smoked or took a shot of drank because I started off the second album on another note.” Andre made such a remarkable visual and musical transformation for OutKast’s second album, 1996’s ATLiens, from wearing a white robe and head scarf to reciting Nuwabian beliefs that the Egyptians were descended from aliens, that some fans speculated he was on drugs. On “Return of the ‘G’” from 1998’s Aquemini, Andre staunchly defended his new look: “Return of the gangsta/ Thanks ta/ Them n*ggas who get the wrong impression of expression/ Then the question is, ‘Big Boi, what’s up with Andre?/ Is he on coke?/ Is he on drugs?/ Is he gay?/ When y’all gon’ break up?’/ When y’all gon’ wake up/ N*gga I’m feeling better than ever/ What’s wrong with you?”

Fans didn’t question Andre 3000 because he stopped getting high. They wondered why he changed. The hip-hop audience seems to loathe personal and artistic evolution unless it’s within a pop context of Bowie-esque visual and sonic transformation; OutKast’s mastery of that dynamic made it one of the past decade’s best-selling artists. But for those who don’t hold pop ambitions, staying the same appears to be the only recourse. On “Can It Be So Simple (Remix) from 1995’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, Raekwon rhymed, “Now I’m all about G notes/ No more time for weed mixed with coke/ I wash my mouth out with soap.” Of course, he spent much of his 2009 sequel Only Built 4 Cuban Link…Part II regressing into cocaine glory.

Another example of creative recidivism is Queensbridge rapper Prodigy. On Mobb Deep’s 1999 hit single “Quiet Storm,” he vowed, “I spent too many nights sniffin’ coke, gettin’ right/ Wastin’ my life/ Now I’m tryin’ to make things right.” Years later, he released the excellent Return of the Mac, and its centerpiece was “Mac 10 Handle.” “I sit alone in my dirty ass room staring at candles/ High on drugs,” he begins, interpolating a lyric from Geto Boys’ “My Mind Playing Tricks on Me.” Prodigy never says what type of drugs he’s on. But Alchemist’s sampling of Edwin Starr’s “Easin’ In,” which he turns into a mottled, bluesy refrain for Prodigy’s violent rant, leaves the impression that the rapper is all tweaked out.

“Mac 10 Handle” illustrates that, when it comes to exploring the depths of drug addiction, rappers tend to rely on our imaginations as a guide, while marking a path with breadcrumbs like dusty blues loops, downbeat and menacing keyboard sounds, and lyrical admissions of paranoia. These bleak arrangements are meant to contrast with the Ecstasy-popping adventures of Mack 10’s “Pop X,” Gucci Mane’s “Pillz” and D4L’s “Scotty.” Whereas one side highlights Ecstasy as a positive experience and frequent sex tool, the other hints at overuse, a burdensome monkey on the back.

Incredibly, despite all the recent headlines of arrests, real drug addiction remains taboo in hip-hop. Many of us remember the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s and how it affected our communities. And so, despite the Ecstasy vogue, hip-hop fans don’t want to return to the wanton abandon of the disco era and Grandmaster Melle Mel’s “White Lines (Don’t Do It).” But what if that era has already reappeared, but we just don’t want to admit it? In a world that emphasizes mastery of your environment at all costs, copping to addiction signifies a loss of control and personal weakness.

Kid Cudi is often dismissed by critics as an electro-hop dandy, but he’s just as obsessed with dominance as the next rapper. So, for The Legend of Mr. Rager, he explained his personal troubles through a prism of the perils of fame and leading a revolution or “Revofev.” He unveils a new sound, too. Whereas Man on the Moon: The End of Day celebrated introspection as a psychedelic journey, complete with electro sounds and stories of mushroom-eating as foreplay (“Enter Galactic (Love Connection Part 1)”); The Legend of Mr. Rager simmers with melodramatic strings, emo-ish ballads and cryptic lyrics like “All Along’s” “I’m addicted to highs/ Would you like to know why? … I don’t want what I need/ What I need hates me.”

Narcotic addiction isn’t just an occupational hazard for celebrities both real and pseudo, but a problem that affects wide swaths of the population. Perhaps that’s why Eminem’s Recovery may be less musically sophisticated than The Legend of Mr. Rager, but it is more honest. “You’re lying to yourself,” says Eminem on “Talkin’ 2 Myself.” He could be speaking for a generation of MCs dabbling with hard drugs yet are afraid to look in the mirror.

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This essay was posted November 9 on the Rhapsody SoundBoard blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.

Photo by Pamela Littky.

Rap Is Not Pop: The Foreign Exchange and the Soul Revival

Earlier this year, the Foreign Exchange earned a Grammy nomination for “Daykeeper,” a dreamy ballad filled with soft percussion and cooed phrasings of “She Loves Me.” Cited for Best Urban/Alternative Performance, “Daykeeper,” the lead single from 2008’s Leave It All Behind, confirmed that this email correspondence between Durham, North Carolina vocalist Phonte Coleman and Dutch producer Matthijs “Nicolay” Rook has blossomed into a fruitful creative partnership. While it ascends, Phonte’s Little Brother, one of the more influential indie-rap groups of the past decade, lay in tatters. Having never truly recovered from the departure of producer 9^th Wonder – although its third and final studio album, 2007’s Getback, was a valiant effort – remaining members Phonte and Big Pooh quietly wound down operations, then officially marked its end with this year’s collection of outtakes, Leftback.

The “rapper-ternt-sanga” phenomenon is well-chronicled, as is the belief that singing offers a wider range of musical possibilities than rapping. (Whether it’s true or not is fodder for another column.) However, just because Phonte isn’t the first rapper – and definitely not the last – to become a soul singer doesn’t mean that he hasn’t brought new ideas to the genre. Far from homogenous, he and other indie-rap artists like Aloe Blacc and Mayer Hawthorne have distinct identities. Each sounds different from the other, and their artistic quirks are transforming our perceptions of hip-hop music.

Ironically, the Foreign Exchange may be the most traditional of the lot. With Little Brother, Phonte was a supremely talented and opinionated rapper. Unafraid to burn bridges, he helped turn the group’s major label bow into 2005’s The Minstrel Show, a scathing indictment of the black entertainment industry. And when he and Nicolay collaborated on the Foreign Exchange’s 2004 debut, Connected, it sounded like a Little Brother side project, with Big Pooh and various members of LB’s Justus League crew chipping in verses. Both projects centered on entrenched ideas about good MC’ing, hip-hop beats, and soul music. The shift from backpack rap dynamics to the smooth and jazzy blues of Leave It All Behind didn’t change that equation. Appropriately, their just-released third album is called Authenticity. Phonte added vocal choruses and adlibs to the LB catalog (often in tandem with Darien Brockington), but Leave It All Behind and Authenticity signal his maturation as a singer. The former found him carrying a strong albeit flat tone, while he adds texture and sonic variety to his performance on the latter. Meanwhile, Nicolay’s production evokes early 80s quiet storm and jazz fusion, from the Linn drum machine beat on the title track to the piano key swoops on “Fight for Love.”

Mayer Hawthorne, the nom de plume for Los Angeles musician Andrew Mayer Cohen, isn’t a natural singer, either, but his slight vocals and creamy falsetto is part of his charm. The most incredible aspect of 2009’s A Strange Arrangement is its fidelity to Philly soul and doo-wop. Its penultimate track, the wondrous “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out,” seems lifted from the Delfonics’ songbook. In fact, Mayer not only hearkens to soul’s golden age, but faithfully replicates it. When “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” was first released as a heart-shaped vinyl single in 2008, some assumed that it was a previously-unreleased artifact. He bolsters these production stunts with excellent songwriting. The doleful title track, for example, spins around this lovely chorus: “Darling, me and you, we had a strange arrangement/ But you broke all the rules and now I’m playing the fool for love/ Darling yes it’s true, we had a grand engagement/ But I can’t stand by while you break my heart in two.”

Aloe Blacc’s recently released Good Things also closely hews to the retro-soul playbook, thanks to the arrangements of Leon Michaels and Jeff “Dynamite” Silverman (also known as Truth & Soul). Aloe Blacc can’t help but sound contemporary, though, so even as the throwback horns pip on “I Need a Dollar” and gossamer strings swirl on “Take Me Back,” he sings with a strong yet strident voice. He’s also an excellent songwriter. On “I Need a Dollar,” he effortlessly treads a line between pathetic comedy and tragedy as he impersonates a homeless man looking for cash to buy liquor. Its desperate refrain – “I don’t know if I’m walking on solid ground/ ‘Cause everything around me is crumbling down” – holds a mirror to the Great Recession.

The retro-soul phenomenon has been both praised and dismissed as a post-millennium fad, and it’s not hard to imagine that it will eventually sound as dated as the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” swing revival of the 1970s. Yet it holds obvious appeal for onetime B-boys like Mayer, who was originally a DJ and producer in Detroit; and Aloe Blacc, a former rapper with the L.A. indie group Emanon. Crate-digging, or the art of digging for old records with rarely heard gems, is essential to hip-hop culture. Concurrently, there has been a decline of classical hip-hop values in rap. Stars like Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, and Nicki Minaj undoubtedly study Jay-Z’s The Blueprint and Beyonce’s Dangerously in Love, not the Treacherous Three’s “New Rap Language” and Afrika Bambaataa’s Death Mix. As the culture’s mainstream component narrows into a thin technological gloss, with little differentiation between R&B slickness and ringtone rap bounce, some of its innovators head to soul music’s less compromised environs.

Critics and fans often ignored Aloe Blacc’s group Emanon. He didn’t began receiving much deserved acclaim until he switched to singing vocals, first on his solo debut, 2006’s Shine Through, and then on Good Things. The throwback of Good Things’ is clearly indebted to hip-hop. It’s the product of someone who listens to great soul records and maybe samples from them, but didn’t actually perform during that era. But when Aloe Blacc sings, he communicates in a way that everyone can understand – or at least more than the tens of thousands (and I’m being generous here) that bought Emanon’s 2005 album The Waiting Room.

Meanwhile, many people still don’t believe that hip-hop is real music. Or, as Phonte puts it so cogently on “Tigallo from Dolo” from Leftback: “Rappin’ Tay, four-and-a-half mic honoree/ Or singin’ Tay, first-time Grammy nominee?/ N*gga you do the math.”

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This essay was posted November 3 on the Rhapsody SoundBoard blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.

Photo by Tobias Rose for Kompleks Creative Inc.

Rap Is Not Pop: The Wonderful World Of Gucci Mane

Several years ago, I interviewed Radric “Gucci Mane” Davis at the office of his former label, Atlanta indie upstart Big Cat Records. He had just finished a six-month bid for assaulting a local promoter with a pool cue, and had narrowly escaped indictment charges for killing a man – the now-infamous 2005 incident when former rival Young Jeezy allegedly sent a team of goons to snatch Gucci’s chain – by claiming self-defense. As Gucci and I spoke, his lawyer and publicist listened closely, ready to interject if the conversation veered into a hazardous legal area.

But Gucci didn’t seem like a violent felon. He was quiet, shy, and articulate. He nervously revealed that he had completed some courses at Georgia Perimeter College before settling on a rap career, and claimed that he made party music, not hardcore gangsta rap. “I’m a party rapper,” he protested. “I like to get it crunk…dancefloor music, that’s what I’m best at.”

And there lies the contradiction at the heart of Gucci Mane’s persona and his music. The Gucci catalog is an adult playpen, with debauched tributes to getting “Wasted” and proclamations that “Kush Is My Cologne.” He delivers these club anthems with a nasally vocal tone reminiscent of Hanna-Barbera character Snagglepuss, cryptic Dirty South slang, and plenty of wink-wink humor that makes it all seductive and carefree. “Is you rollin’?” asks a woman on “Pillz” from 2006’s Hard to Kill. “B*tch I might be,” he answers. For Gucci’s first national hit, “Freaky Gurl,” he interpolated Rick James’ “Super Freak” with intentionally hilarious results: “She’s a very freaky gurl/ Don’t take her to mama/ First you get her name/ Then you get her number/ Then you get some brain in the back seat of a Hummer.”

Without reciting his laundry list of arrests and prison stints, it’s safe to say that Gucci has lived the thug life others simply fantasize about. For some, his rap sheet lends his recordings an authenticity: he really is that gold grilled, white tee D-boy partying in the Trap House. But it also allows some critics to dismiss his work as violent and misogynist in spite of his undeniable lyrical talents.

When I discussed Gucci’s music with Rhapsody managing editor Sam Chennault, he theorized that Young Jeezy has sold more records because his rap style is emphatic and easy to understand. Indeed, Young Jeezy is all bluster; he litters hit singles such as “And Then What” and “I Love It” with simplistic do-re-mi rhymes and plenty of “Yeeeah!” and “That’s right!” adlibs. In contrast, Gucci’s lines can be incredibly nuanced. Check his crazily addled rhymes on last year’s should-been hit “Lemonade”: “Woke up in the morning, f*ckin bought a yellow Aston Martin/ Yellow bricks, yellow dust, yellow ring, yellow tusk/ Yellow pills, spinnin’ wheels, yellow weed, we up with us.”

I countered that Gucci may have missed his cultural moment. In Zeitgeist terms, trap music – the deep South equivalent of the West Coast’s G-funk era – peaked in 2006 with hits like T.I.’s King, Young Jeezy’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101 and Three 6 Mafia’s Most Known Unknown. Meanwhile, Gucci has been burdened by self-inflicted legal problems. In 2009, he undermined what could have been a major breakthrough, The State vs. Radric Davis, by earning yet another prison stint for parole violations. Though The State managed to debut in the top album charts, Gucci’s incarceration damaged its promotional campaign, and by the time he got out in March, its buzz had dissipated.

Released in late September, The Appeal: Georgia’s Most Wanted includes a mea culpa from Gucci Mane called “Grown Man.” (It’s become something of a tradition: On The State vs. Radric Davis, he offered the similarly-themed “Worst Enemy.”) It’s a hopeful, if slightly cloying number, and Gucci raps too fast on the track, turning his lines into a mushy slur. He sounds more convincing on “What It’s Gonna Be,” where he brushes back gossip by claiming, “I’m in a zone/ They keep on gettin’ offended/ But I ain’t did nothin’ wrong/ But tighten up my business/ And now I’m makin’ millions.”

“Grown Man” arrives near The Appeal’s close, but earlier album cuts subvert this post-prison epiphany. “Wave bye to the bad guy,” Gucci begins on “Little Friend,” drawing inspiration from the oft-referenced Brian De Palma flick Scarface. “I coulda been a doctor/ Shoulda been a lawyer/ Go to court so much I coulda been my own employer.” “Trap Talk” (“Mac-9 ain’t far away and my dog don’t even play with me”), “Making Love to the Money,” and “Party Animal” draw him back to vivid character sketches of a young prodigy with a taste for guns, drug consumption and girl-chasing, all rendered with a keen intelligence.

Perhaps the most damaging criticism against Gucci Mane is that he hasn’t transcended the trap music sub-genre with overt pop ambitions or a compelling album-length masterwork. It’s clear why he indulges in gangsta tropes – it’s the language of mainstream hip-hop – but he’s better at describing them with lyrical grace than explaining why he’s fascinated by them, and even willing to ruin his life in pursuit of them. Sure, “lemonade chains with the V cuts” must look pretty, and it’s fun to get “white boy wasted.” Perhaps objectification and money lust is its own reward, and a motivation for improving a bleak and impoverished existence.

However, The Appeal comes closest than any of Gucci’s past albums to presenting his songs in a narrative flow that makes them more than a collection of above-average rap bangers. With help from Nicki Minaj and Pharrell Williams, he offers a glass of “Haterade,” dropping allusions to all the problems that have beleaguered him. As Pharrell sings, “Just lift your glass,” Gucci answers, “Just think about the future and forget the past.”

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This essay was posted October 6 on the Rhapsody SoundBoard blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.

When I posted my article on the so-called “Blog Rap’s Second Wave” yesterday, I realized I haven’t posted other entries from my Rap Is Not Pop column for Rhapsody.

Actually, I didn’t re-post this one because I wasn’t happy with it. I initially planned to make a grand statement about the hyped “rap’s new generation,” but realized that concept seems a bit outdated now, even if its leading artists have only begun to release major albums instead of just mixtapes.  (I freely admit to contributing to said hype.) So I tried to reposition the essay as a commentary on where this first wave of Internet age MCs is heading since emerging in 2006-2007.

This essay was posted April 28 on Rhapsody’s Music Stuff Place blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.

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Rap Is Not Pop: Rap’s New Generation

We’ve waited years for the much-blogged-about new school to emerge. It appears that moment has finally arrived. The music charts are teeming with hits by Drake, from 2009′s inescapable “Best I Ever Had” to the new “Over.” Kid Cudi continues to show up in the strangest places, whether it’s on dance-club tracks with Dan Black (“Symphonies”) and Sharam from Deep Dish (“She Came Along”) or on Vitamin Water’s new “Pursuit of Happiness” ad campaign. Asher Roth is courting MTV attention with Asleep in the Bread Aisle while maneuvering between frat-rap expectations and online haterade. And B.o.B is currently sitting at the summit of the pop charts with “Nothin’ on You,” his shaggy-dog ballad with Bruno Mars of the Smeezingtons; his soon-to-be hit debut, The Adventures of Bobby Ray, is now landing at online and brick-and-mortar vendors.

Meanwhile, Cool Kids, Pac Div, Blu, Chiddy Bang, Jay Electronica, Theophilus London and others wait in the wings. For those of us who suffered through nearly 20 years of gangster-ism and thug-ism as all-conquering ideologies, it feels like the clouds have lifted. No one is going to start wearing black medallions and claiming “word to the Mother” again — those days are over. And urban streets remain hip-hop’s cultural nexus, now and (hopefully) forever. But more goes on there than just drug dealing, pimping hoes, random acts of violence and being confronted by law-enforcement overseers. The new generation of rap nerds hanging out, spitting rhymes, chasing girls, playing with genre and dreaming of stardom isn’t brushing over society’s ills in favor of a suburban wonderland. It’s expanding the narratives.

Much like punk rock — an amorphous sound and style that coalesced with ‘zines like Creem, Punk and Sniffin’ Glue — the new school draws from Common and Kanye West’s boho/buppie aspirations, the true-school heroics of Little Brother and Tanya Morgan, Detroit’s slum village realism, and Los Angeles’ array of beat technicians and future soul interlocutors. It merged on blogs like the New Music Cartel (2dopeboyz.com, Nahright.com), sympathetic websites (ByronCrawford.com, Okayplayer.com) and the occasional magazine (URB). (And yes, MySpace played a role, too.)

Just as punk shed styles as it evolved, like power pop and mod, the new-school sensibility grew and contracted. The so-called “hipster rappers” who ruled in 2007, including Spank Rock, Pase Rock, Amanda Blank and Kid Sister, would hardly be considered part of it now. Meanwhile, the intricate lyricism and storytelling abilities of Mickey Factz, Charles Hamilton (before he ethered his career), Wale and Kidz in the Hall have become mere rocket fuel for the requisite moon launch toward mainstream pop stardom.

One trait of hip-hop in the new millennium is that rappers no longer tell you they’re successful a la Public Enemy’s “we ride limos too” assertion on “Bring the Noise.” They demand you make them successful, beg you to make them successful, predict that you’ll make them successful. Drake’s recent singles, including “Successful,” “Forever” and “Over,” reveal an artist with conflicting emotions, feeling anxious and empowered, as he stands on the precipice of Making It Big. “It’s far from over,” he half-promises.

The same could be said for B.o.B, who sings of alienation, feeling like a “Ghost in the Machine” and decrying the limits of “Fame” on The Adventures of Bobby Ray. Still, he pursues the audience’s rapture, stocking the album with big keyboard melodies and chimerical pop stars like Hayley Williams and Rivers Cuomo. He’s not the only one pursuing the arena moment. Every rap star with an eye toward supplanting Jay-Z, or at least opening for him, uses the same slick musical packaging, whether it’s Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco or even Lil Wayne.

Some crusty old punks might blanch at comparing their beloved anti-establishment heroes with the over-marketed new school. To be sure, there’s nothing grassroots about it: most of the aforementioned names benefit from savvy, well-connected management and flashy street marketing teams straight out of Rob Walker’s Consumed. But while Talking Heads struggled through Fear of Music paranoia and The Clash dissembled en route to the proverbial brass ring of platinum sales and stadium tours, there were smaller, less burdened bands like The Feelies and Dead Kennedys who continued to push sound forward. (Bear with me, I’m generalizing here.)

Unfortunately, hip-hop’s all-or-nothing credo endures; perhaps an outgrowth of its impoverished, Horatio Alger origins, it now feels like the monkey on its back. For every Tanya Morgan that seems content with a creatively rich, commercially modest existence, there are hordes of “blog rappers” that haunt email inboxes with zShare links to MP3s, issue freestyles over the latest hot beats like Just Blaze’s “Exhibit C,” and will do anything to get noticed — and simply postpone the realization that they aren’t going to be media stars.

I would love for rap’s new generation to establish a vibrant indie network that feeds and anchors its pop exploits. But after watching the rise and fall of ’90s underground hip-hop, I’m not holding my breath. If they can continue to illustrate their interior lives, create a thematic landscape that not only includes the inner cities and cracked ghetto streets but also the suburban sprawls and sparsely populated plains, and maybe even deliver some form of gender equity, then they will have accomplished plenty. It’s a vision of hip-hop as a universal state of mind that has been lost for decades. But if youth movements are good for one thing, it’s boundless optimism.