Our nineteenth time covering him (third if you don’t count features…)!
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Will Adams: 2 Chainz gets his own rage aria, bouncing around lyrical themes as his voice is warped to alienesque proportions. The sputtering beat would drag it down, but it’s so beside the point; all you can do is listen to 2 Chainz rattle off his resume, venture into scatology, and, finally and unexpectedly, reveal a troubled home life.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: Now that 2 Chainz can safely be slid into the “underrated” category, it’s a little easier to appreciate the bizarre details of his rapping. Part of his charm lies in his clunkers such as “doggin’ these hoes like a shih tzu,” and on “Freebase” he hints at a fecal obsession (a shit tape, huh?). But he’s also a pro at insane little details, some of them bordering on the unnecessary. Here he inadvertently disses Papoose, reveals he doesn’t want to fill his watch with envy and namedrops several gas stations, all before ending the song on a bit of an emotional gut punch about his childhood.
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Alfred Soto: OK on other people’s records, stentorian and hectoring on his own. He bellows persuasively but without wit on this C Note track, although “I’ve done a song by everybody from Jermaine Dupri down to Papoose” almost worked if a pregnant pause didn’t follow; the equivalent of an elbow in the ribs.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: I don’t think he’s ever managed to be this boring, but he used to have a pretty good ear for beats. Shame.
[2]
David Sheffieck: The beat’s nothing special, but 2 Chainz, halfway between anguished and angry, elevates the song in his focus on how much it took to reach his current status: “Work hard, play hard/Work hard again” is the key here, a statement that could seem like hyperbole coming from anyone else but from him is legitimately a #humblebrag.
[7]
Brad Shoup: You think he’s going for the easy joke by putting Pryor up top, until the ending, anyway. The verses fold down the middle: there’s the struggle, building to constant feature work and the confidence to threaten Flex, tapering to more memories of the struggle. I think about Diamond Shamrock becoming Valero all the time. The jokes land, all of ’em, from the TEC-9 imagery to the vaudevillian wine joke. Don’t know if 2 Chainz has Yeezus in mind, but the pitched-down vocals and the astringent synths are light-years ahead of “Crack” or “Dope Peddler” off TRU.
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