Gucci Mane has resurfaced into the limelight after his recent release from prison, and he marked the occasion by releasing his newest project Everybody Looking on July 22. Real name Radric Delantic Davis, Gucci is based in Atlanta, Georgia and he released his first album in 2005 entitled Trap House.
His highest charting album was 2010’s The Appeal: Georgia’s Most Wanted and he is also the CEO of 1017 Records. He released multiple albums and projects from prison, making over $1,300,000 whilst incarcerated. The rapper has been in and out of prison throughout his whole music career, with his latest sentence spanning six months for possession of a fireman by a convicted felon.
Everybody Looking is Gucci’s first album since his 2013 release of Trap House 3 and it has proved to be the highest charting album of his career, entering the Billboard album chart at #2. It is a 15-track album featuring collaborations with Drake, Kanye West and Young Thug. Released via Atlantic Records, the album release was announced on Gucci’s Twitter with a leak of the album cover for all awaiting fans.
‘P**** Print’ with Kanye West is certainly a highlight of the album. Kanye West is in the prime of his career at the moment, so Gucci is using his collaborative skills to propel the track to success. There is a simplistic backing beat, which is only there by appearance to support not cover the lyrics and rapping of the two rappers. The chorus is repetitive, which is an effective tool used in rap to create its own personal sound and stick in the head of those who listen.
Gucci leads the way with his signature rap style, with Kanye cutting in after the first chorus to wrap up the track. The song surrounds one of rap’s greatest subjects, sex, which means that the appeal is strong for a slow track on a night out. It does not overload the listener with different sounds and changes of tempo, so they are forced to concentrate on the message of the words.
Gucci begins the album with “No Sleep“, and wraps the album up with “Pick Up The Pieces“, to create an album with a consistent flow so that fans can sit down and listen to the complete project without missing out on a track. “I can’t even sleep I got so much to say” gives the impression to the listener that there is a lot of pent up music that Gucci has been sitting on whilst in prison, and plenty of messages to deliver to whoever will listen.
This engages his audience, as they recognise that feelings and perspectives will be revealed throughout the album, so Gucci manages to hold the attention of whoever is listening without having to force anything out of them. The outro is slower, as Gucci is tying together what his album is trying to express and has a heavier beat to it so it rings deeper with the people who have stuck through the whole thing. Gucci knows how to draw the inquisitive in.
Drake is a much-loved rapper, and his track with Gucci, “Back On Road” combines Drake’s well-recognised vocals with Gucci’s hard-hitting rap. It’s repetitive, just like plenty of other tracks on the album, but this allows for the listener to follow the beat and allows it to get stuck in their head like an earworm. It’s short, only two and a half minutes long, but that is all it requires to be successful as Drake can work his way around a verse and Gucci recognises that the focus should be on what he has to portray rather than the inclusion of other big rap names.
The track is catchy, fast-paced and full of reference that social media enthusiasts will certainly pick up on and include as normal speech, “Now am back on road”. The lyrics make it clear that Gucci only has time for the people who stuck by him when he was at his lowest, rather than those who will try and leech of his limelight in the media to boost their own popularity. What better way to deliver that message than to collaborate with one of the biggest names in rap to pack the punch it requires.
The longest track is “Richest N**** In The Room“, which begins with trippy sounds and lots of blissful breathing, as though Gucci is laying a trance over his listeners, and is, as the title suggests, about how he is gaining mass riches through his rap career and how people never thought he could make it. How wrong they were, he managed to release lit music from prison.
“All My Children” is about how Gucci looks upon his rap competitors has his children, as he professes the greatest music and he is acting as a rap father figure for lost rappers to look up to. Gucci has lost no confidence whilst spending time inside.
“1st Day Out The Feds” sounds like a 90s trance track to begin with, then sure enough breaks into a slow drum beat rap to display what it is like to constantly be on watch whilst in prison and what effect prison had on him, “Call me crazy so much I think I’m startin’ to believe them… / Own mama turned her back on me and that’s my mama”.
There is another side to Gucci that he expresses through song that is reflective of his choices in life and the results they lead to, but he always brings it back round to a banging rap hit. Gucci Mane’s Everybody Looking is out now on Atlantic Records, purchase it on iTunes here.
Words by Libby Beacham
