By Andres Gonzalez, Online Editor
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve asked myself a lot of things.
When I was 5, I asked myself: “Which sadistic animal created the shoelaces?” Luckily, Reynolds High School senior Chandler Borton came around, taught me how to tie my shoelaces and now I’m a marathon runner.
Kidding.
Later in life, around the time I was seven, I asked myself whether or not Space Cowboy really was a viable career path. Last week, I asked myself an equally pivotal question: “Why did we ever stop listening to Young Jeezy?”
With the recent meteoric rises of rap phenoms like Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky and to a lesser, cult-ier extent, Tyler, the Creator, the behavior and predilections of music blogs and critics have begun to swing to an almost mathematical level of scrutiny. Reviews have set this ridiculous pseudo-checklist where they define the artist’s cadence, voice pitch and quality, the quality of the beats, the content and word choice. Album reviews and shakedowns are starting to sound more and more like papers for English class instead of simply describing the album listening experience.
As a result, music critics – loosely defined as anyone who has an opinion on music and talks about it with their friends – have begun to lose sight of what actually matters in a song. How does it make you feel? How does it make you move? I’m no stranger to these types of articles and reviews and as YouTube sensation Supa Hot Fiya might say, “Pretentious about rap…I been dat!”
In order to break away from the clinical reviews of yore, I’ve decided to review an entire artist, one who’s been condemned to the doldrums of rap: Young Jeezy.
Glancing at his Spotify overview, an obvious problem pops up: His most popular song is the recent single “RIP” and the next is “Put On,” a song released in 2008. Wow, talk about longevity. His last album, “Thug Motivation 103: Hustlerz Ambition” was released two years ago, but with the recent release of the single “RIP,” Young Jeezy is regaining his corner of the radio. It was the first time that the absolutely grimy beat of “RIP” came through the radio that the question, “Why did we ever stop listening to Young Jeezy?” came to mind.
A quick gander at the track list for “TM103: Hustlerz Ambition” is like Columbus looking at the New World. “Bangers,” Columbus said. “Bangers everywhere.” Young Jeezy’s specialty seems to be bangers, usually bass-laden singles that provide the background music for the sweaty, spandex-constricted hip-thrusting that happens at the typical Habitat Dance. As a song, a banger’s whole goal in life is to get the crowd hype, and there are few albums as fully stocked with bangers as “TM103: Hustlerz Ambition.” Literally half of the album is bangers.
Stop. Have you realized that the album’s title is set up like a college class? How would a class taught by Young Jeezy go? Is this class a required humanities credit? Does this college take AP credit for AP True Ambition? Imagine walking onto the shiny, clean campus of student’s dreams and then imagine the horror on that student’s parent’s face when they decide to major in Hustlin’.
“Please Mr. Jeezy, will you consider half credit for this late paper?”
Moving on. Now don’t forget that this is the same rapper who brought us “My President,” so don’t expect intense overarching themes and beautiful concept albums. Not every artist needs to be a Kendrick Lamar and make an entire album about growing up in Compton, or be a Kanye talking about social issues or pressures, and thank God that not every artist is as soft as Ms. Field’s Cookies or softer than Aveeno dripping on flower petals like Drake is. In fact, there’s something refreshing about an artist who unabashedly makes songs about being better than other people, girls, cars and parties.
In a previous life, I’d have discounted Young Jeezy as a guilty pleasure, something to listen to while showering or to put on blast in my car while trying to make the soccer mom in the Honda Odyssey beside me at the light kind of uncomfortable. Young Jeezy deserves more respect than that. Just because he doesn’t make an entire album about growing up, in his case Atlanta, or the crime in Chicago or about having too much money doesn’t mean he’s any less of an artist. In fact, it actually elevates him to the point where he’s eschewed the “society empowering” aspect in order to simply bring more fun and more bangers into our lives.
But what about a rapper like Rick Ross, who was a correctional officer – basically a sellout in the rap world – but now raps about all sorts of illegal things? From a very simplistic standpoint, it doesn’t make Rick Ross’ voice any less deep or give his songs a vibe that’s anything other than the feeling that a mafia boss must feel while rolling through a city in the middle of a motorcade in blacked-out Escalades. Or the feeling of being an oil sheik on a 400-foot yacht with 600 scantily clad women and a tennis court. Or the feeling of throwing a party in the Grand Canyon.
That’s the answer to the question. We stopped listening to Young Jeezy because we forgot how his music made us feel. We forgot how it felt to ride around town with grimy beats, to dance at stoplights. We forgot because we were sitting so high up on our pretentious rap horses that we forgot what a banger really sounded like.
So whenever you’re in a mood where you don’t know what to listen to, try slapping some Young Jeezy into the music machine and enjoy the fact that a rapper is finally spoon-feeding us entertainment.