Gucci Mane Hardest Songs

[Minette Mccandrew]

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Gucci Mane has emerged as one of the most divisive rappers of the past few years. Like everyone, he has his haters. They haven't stopped him from becoming one of the most productive, prolific rappers of the last few years either, having releasing hundreds upon hundreds of songs in his relatively young career. His method? Per the name of one of his most celebrated mixtapes: No Pad, No Pencil, an improvisational approach driven by his fanbase's nonstop thirst for new material.

2007's Back to the Traphouse received middling reviews, including one from Gucci himself. And despite the major-label meddling and unnecessary guests, it's still a strong release. Proof-positive? The triumphant trap sales pitch "16 Fever," a major song in the Gucci catalog, its budget-regal backing track a powerfully anthemic opening for one of the rapper's underappreciated releases.

Ironically, one of Gucci's earliest songs to get national attention wasn't even his; it was a track by his protege, OJ Da Juiceman, and in many senses, it was more OJ's song than Gucci's. Named for OJ's trademark ad-lib, the track also featured a fairly middle-of-the-road verse from Gucci, but was catchy enough, and demonstrated the crackling chemistry the duo developed.

Gucci would vary new rhyme schemes in almost every track, at a certain point; "Atlanta Zoo" is only one example, but one of the better ones he's got: "I'm obnoxious, I'm flowing crazy/I need to stop this/don't knock this/Y'all niggas lazy/you need to watch this/preposterous/If you could fathom/how you could block this."

"Timothy" was a dip in Slick Rick-style story raps, with a sly nod to Eazy-E on the hook. The track's titular character comes across $250,000 during a car theft, only to find out that it belonged to a major drug dealer (shout out to George Pelanacos' The Sweet Forever), and complications arise. Gucci's improvised style might make for stiffer narrative, but Gucci sounds all the more authentic for it.

Producer: Shawty Redd

Album: Zone 6 to Duval

Label: So Icey Ent.

Over thunderous ascending Shawty Redd synthesizers, Gucci brags about how much he paid to get the song airplay before kicking into a bunch of cartoon references. This is the kind of thing that very, very few street rappers would be able to pull off, but because his street bonafides were so unquestioned, it seemed to liberate him to be as weird as he possibly could. In this case, it meant a street banger that made references to Tweety Bird, Odie and Spongebob Squarepants. And yes, even Heathcliff.

"Making Love to the Money" relied heavily on Gucci's hook-writing skills and sense of humor and less on the multi-valent talents that had built him up as a mixtape superstar. The song was nonetheless a major strip club hit and climbed the charts, hitting No. 17 on the rap charts and No. 36 on R&B. It remains one of his most successful songs, and "I'm talking Kim K, I'm talking Ray J!" will probably bounce in and out of your head for the rest of your natural-born life.

Gucci Mane has championed hated-on underdogs since early in his career; in some cases, the artists he's pushed have flipped to beloved status (see: Future). In others, they remain irredeemable by "polite" hip-hop society (see: Rocko). A member of the latter camp, Soulja Boy found a kindred soul in Gucci. Over sparse piano bounce (produced by Soulja), Soulja, Gucci and Shawty Lo released a track with the sparseness of a snap single, the kind of music that would lead traditionalists to claim the duo was destroying hip-hop from the inside.

An early fan favorite, "I'ma Dog" was one of the, erm, delightfully ignorant Gucci tracks, which found him in a purely politically-incorrect and unapologetically misogynistic mode. There are some clever moments ("My Jacob watch is short bus, man it's special ed/Cause these girls be drooling every time they see the VVS") But this song is included purely out of Gucci completism; it's a pretty unpleasant track, but impossible to ignore due to its favored status and popularity amongst early adopters to the rapper's street-oriented verses. It should be noted that DG Yola has a pretty energetic guest spot.

"Gangsta Movie," the intro from that record and his favorite track, set a new cinematic direction and a bigger budget; Drumma Boy's beats were smoother than the lo-def trap beats he'd worked with in the Trap House/Chicken Talk era, and had a less eccentric approach than Zaytoven's production on Gucci Sosa and EA Sportscenter. But "Gangsta Movie" didn't shy away from any of the rougher content that had defined his sound to that point; instead, it embraced his past ("Gangsta grills, you pussy nigga, back on my drug dealer shit,") the unflinching violence and potent imagery ("I bust a brick, it look just like the inside of a coconut") that defined underground hits like "Cuttin Off Fingaz."

Gucci himself marks "Black Tee" as the moment that Atlanta really started rocking with him, the moment when his buzz began again in earnest. The song was a flip of the popular Dem Franchize Boyz "White Tee" snap single, transformed into an anthem for armed robbery. It was made ever-so-much more gangster by a series of lyrics emphasizing how few fucks he really gave: "I'm a lick-hitting nigga, all I do is do dirt/Leave a red bloodstain on your all-white shirt/Gucci Mane so gutter I'll steal money out your purse/Lay up in your yard, rob you when you go to church."

Gucci's verse on "Steady Mobbin'" didn't just hold its own against Lil Wayne, but arguably bested him. With typical lyrical brutality (he threatens to shoot you "anywhere from the ankle up") and stark imagery ("No we do not talk to strangers just cut off these niggas fingers"), he manages to compare his silencer to a Pringles can before calling his sniper rifle Toni Braxton because when it sings, it'll "make you never breathe again."

Gucci and Gotti had an incredible recording chemistry. Beginning with their first major collaboration, "Work Ya Wrist" on Chicken Talk, mid-period bangers like "Mo Money," and as recently as 2012's "It Ain't Funny," the two had a yin-yang complementary style. Gucci had a manic unpredictability, chaotic, and unrefined; Gotti, by contrast, was all muscular control ("It Ain't Funny" works so well for pushing towards an inversion of this dynamic, even if it never quite achieves it). The duo's highest-profile collaboration was the hooky "Bricks," a massive single that became one of Gucci's early signature hits.

Now considered a cult classic, Gucci's Trap House LP was initially greeted by modest enthusiasm. But part of what makes it easy to appreciate is how the rapper evolved. While his later releases would be more ambitious, more lyrical, weirder and more infused with autobiographical details, Trap House was the hard coal core at the gangster heart of Gucci's success. The title track, produced by Shawty Redd, has a strange beat that manages to split the difference between space-age futurism and stone-age relic, a beat constructed using some blend of synthesizer and banging rocks together. Some of the flecks of eccentricity that he would later embrace show flashes here, primarily in his metaphors: "Money long like Shaq's feet," "I stay high like giraffe pussy."

With an ominous slow-mo beat from Drumma Boy, "Everybody Lookin'" was a victory for idiosyncratic-pop Gucci over lyrical Gucci, to the song's great benefit. It wasn't the first time he'd used the nose-growing like Pinocchio line (think Mariah's "Obsessed," among others), but this song wasn't about being first; it was about being on top. "Everybody Lookin'" is a song about dominance, largess, and power, the pure intoxication of control and confidence in song. It's not lyrical because effort is the wheelhouse of lesser rappers. This was also a track where the video was as much a part of the song's all-encompassing whirlwind of arrogance as the music, as Gucci rolls down the street in a blue lamborghini with matching blue jewelry and matching blue Air Max '95s, the doors open and his legs kicked out of the car, no seat belt, the high wire act of recklessness the source of his undeniable charisma.

"Freaky Gurl" was Gucci's first hit since "Icy" to reach the Hot 100, peaking at No. 62 in 2007 and marking the beginning of his return to relevance. As it had with "Icy" two years earlier, controversy and conflict surrounded the song. In late 2006, Atlantic Records bought Gucci's contract from Big Cat Records, the independent label that had been selling Gucci's material, for $300,000 and a percentage of the royalties on his major label debut with Atlantic. They pushed the single "Bird Flu," which failed to gain much traction.

Big Cat, in the meantime, continued to market the independently-released Hard to Kill, which featured "Freaky Gurl." The song began to chart, and Atlantic, eager capitalize, sought the track out for Gucci's Back to the Traphouse, according to Big Cat CEO Marlon Rowe. Or, argued Atlantic, Big Cat approached them and tried to sell the royalties to the track for a figure in the six figures. The talks fell through, and Gucci re-recorded the song through Atlantic with a guest verse from Ludacris.

Ultimately, a lawsuit resulted (Gucci Mane and Atlantic Records vs. Marlon Rowe), and Big Cat president Melvin Breeden publicly accused Gucci and Atlantic of espionage; Cyber Sapp, the producer behind the hit song, secured the files from the label before the track mysteriously ended up in the hands of Gucci and Atlantic, although he denied involvement. To add to the confusion, Gucci was having his own conflicts with Atlantic at the time over the direction of his album. As a song, the track has some of Gucci's funniest material ("my money long as a limo / just to show off I put my wrist out the window"), but of course, the song really belongs to Rick James (interpolated for the hook) and R&B singer Joi, whose song "Lick" was sampled for the beat.

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