Album Review
Pitchfork
January 22, 2010
Link
5.9
"Who need be afraid of the merge?" When Walt "
Leaves of Grass" Whitman wrote that, in the 1855 debut edition of the poem that would become "Song of Myself", his subject certainly wasn't Wesley Pentz. But the Philadelphia DJ/producer known as Diplo-- alongside such fellow global travelers as DJ /rupture-- has been among the 21st century's most dauntless joiners of disparate musical cultures. Whether Baltimore club (parties starting in 2003 at Philly's Ukrainian Club), baile funk (2004/2005
Favela mixtapes), Alabama hip-hop (2008's Paper Route Gangstaz mixtape), or Jamaican dancehall (last year's Major Lazer album), Diplo has a musically unimpeachable track record of taking the world's streets' worthiest sounds out of the neighborhoods and into your earbuds.
With
Free Gucci (Best of the Cold War Mixtapes), a freely downloadable mixtape of remixes for Atlanta gangsta rapper Gucci Mane, all that jet lag may have finally caught up with him. Never mind the usual point-missing accusations of cultural tourism-- "Having white kids talk about race on the internet is the dumbest thing in the world," Diplo told Pitchfork's own Tom Breihan in a 2007
Village Voice interview. When it comes to the MC born Radric Davis, "the merge" already happened. After a prolific series of high-profile guest appearances (Mariah Carey, Black Eyed Peas, Big Boi) and mixtapes (his
Cold War trilogy flooded the blogs one day last November) all but guaranteed Lil Wayne comparisons, Gucci Mane's Warner-sponsored
The State vs. Radric Davis debuted in December at #10 on the
Billboard albums chart.
The New York Times hailed the rapper as "one of the most vigorous and exciting in recent memory". I mean, sure-- B'more club, baile funk, Alabama rap, and Jamaican dancehall each existed for years before Diplo got them in his crates. But he introduced them to listeners who probably wouldn't have been exposed to them otherwise. Gucci Mane needs no introduction.
Compared with Diplo's past projects, then,
Free Gucci has little reason to exist. In fact, despite the title, most of the tracks here weren't on the
Cold War mixtapes at all-- the bulk come from last year's superior
The Burrprint: The Movie 3-D. Anyway, all that stuff would be just as academic as arguments about cultural appropriation if the music itself banged. And
that's the problem. Yeah, Gucci's slurry, word-drunk absurdism is a huge part of his appeal. And Diplo's remixers have picked some of the rapper's signature tracks. But Atlanta producers such as Drumma Boy and Zaytoven, with their pin-prick synths and sweaty lurch, are also crucial to Gucci's sound, as even Warner must've recognized by sticking to them and other Southern producers on the new studio album. The indie-friendly mergers Diplo brokers in their place have their moments, but by and large they're no more accessible-- and definitely less complementary-- than their originals.
The most significant connection Diplo makes here isn't between Gucci and casual hip-hop fans. It's between today's various underground styles of woozy, stoner-friendly electronic music. There's glo-fi/chillwave/whatever: Memory Tapes gives
Burrprint's gloriously shameless jewelry boast "Excuse Me" some icy, extraterrestrial counterpoint (space abhors a bare neck). There's post-dubstep blippiness from Zomby, who adds a different kind of trunk-shuddering low-end to
Guccimerica threat "Boi". There's also Warp-signed hip-hop instrumentalist Flying Lotus, fogging up 2008's "Photo Shoot" with siren wobble and extra mush-mouth. Unfortunately, gloomy lo-fi duo Salem have done much better Gucci remixes than this rotely ominous rework of another
Burrprint highlight, "My Shadow". Overall, though,
Free Diplo shows that some of the most notable home electronic producers right now have more in common than their fan factions might like to admit.
The link between Gucci's intoxicated flow and Diplo's chosen remixers should be obvious, but bringing them together isn't always so seamless. French producer Douster puts post-"A Milli" bass mumbles beneath
Burrprint's (relatively) introspective "Frowney Face". OK-- but why did Philly's Emynd think his uptempo version of the same track needed irritating percolator bubbles? DJ Teenwolf, of Brooklyn's Ninjasonik, bur(r)ies
Great BRRitain's "I'm Expecting" ("What you expect? I expect another check, man") in constantly hammering kick drums and skidding sound effects. The same mixtape's "I Be Everywhere" gets an Asian motif and pitch-shifting from English producer Mumdance on one fairly solid remix, then burbling dubstep clichés from San Francisco's DZ on another. Austin's Bird Peterson replaces the mock-gothic sweep of one more
Burrprint cut, "Dope Boys", with expansively conceived bass-synth grandeur that should please fans of Memory Tapes; still, it's an odd fit for such a playful song ("I'm paraplegic/ Where's my paralegal?"). Anyone reading this review can get a better sense of Gucci's weird charms by going straight to the source. Which you can download almost as easily.
As for Diplo himself, the Mad Decent boss can take credit for a few of the mixtape's better tracks-- especially a stomping, synth-slithering "Excuse Me" ("He do all that lame stuff/ I just keep it gangsta") that wouldn't be too far out of place on one of Gucci's own albums. Snares bustle and synths bend on Diplo's "Break Yourself", a much fuller production than the
Burr Russia original. His Mariah Carey-sampling remix of
Guccimerica's outlaw manifesto "Dangers Not a Stranger", with its satin-y keys, might be too precious for some, but it-- like DJ Benzi and Willy Joy's Daniel Bedingfield-sampling trance-rap take on 2008's "I'm the Shit"-- uncovers enjoyably unexpected similarities between otherwise vastly different tracks.
So
Free Gucci isn't great. But even a mixtape without any duds would arrive at a time when Diplo's target audience no longer needs someone like Diplo to help them meet rap halfway. Washed Out, whose gauzy synth-pop isn't included here but shares the same spirit, came to his current sound after working on instrumental hip-hop tracks. Salem have been informed by chopped'n'screwed music since the beginning, and their remix of Jeezy diss "Round One" beats anything here, easy. Newest Warp signee Babe Rainbow, aka Vancouver-based producer Cameron Reed, calls his style "surf-step": lo-fi beach-punk goes dubstep? Reed is also a huge hip-hop fan. Diplo need not be afraid of the merge, but
Free Gucci is too little, too late.
