realized his artistic appeal years ago. See the haunted closing lines from “BFK,” the title track of his 2012 mixtape: “Got a slug for the judge, bringin’ heat for police / And a book full of sins that I reap when I sleep / Then I wake up, and I put ’em on a beat; how you love that?”
The day before our Zoom conversation, Denton joins Gibbs at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Los Angeles, where Gibbs has lived since leaving his native Indiana, in the late 2000s. Despite the maddening traffic clogging the 101 freeway on this late Tuesday afternoon, Gibbs strolls through the automatic lobby doors of the four-star hotel 10 minutes early.
“Rick James is one of my favorite artists and wrote one of my favorite autobiographies. When I read his book, I was really hooked on him. If you do music, you should read. That documentary compared to the book was trash, but n—– can’t read. Half the population is illiterate, so I get it,” Gibbs says when asked why he recreated a photo of the late funk and R&B icon for. Then comes the pivot and the punchline: “You want to diss a rapper? Make them read out loud.
To comprehend the improbability of Gibbs’ gradual yet indefatigable ascent from major label casualty to a critically-acclaimed independent icon to Grammy-nominee and major label priority, you have to go back in time and remember a younger rap industry. Gibbs released his first mixtapes, which caught Lambo’s ears as an Interscope intern, in 2004 and 2005 while selling crack and robbing trains in Gary, Indiana. Drake was still Wheelchair Jimmy.
“I think about [getting dropped] a lot of times, and I cry. I was counted out 14 or 15 years ago. I’m not even supposed to be here right now, statistically, from a street standpoint and a music industry standpoint. The shelf life of an artist these days is fucking short. I was on the [is equally reflective. Perhaps because Gibbs recorded many verses upon waking, the memories he relays are as fragmented and nonlinear as anyone’s dreams.
It’s an implicit testament to a back catalog that warrants regular revisitation, one that can stand next to the oeuvre of any working rapper you choose. Still, he branches out with assistance from Sevn Thomas, DJ Paul, and James Blake. Somehow, an architect of gothic Memphian trap and the U.K.’s post-dubstep poster boy produced back-to-back tracks for the first and probably final time in the history of recorded music.
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