By: Jeff Weiss
Fatherhood hasn't softened America's best gangsta rapper. It's merely made him more armed.
“I had 50 guns; now, I have 100,” says Freddie Gibbs–maybe joking, but probably not. “I've bought two guns for every month that [his daughter has] been alive. It's brought out the protecter in me.” Gibbs credits his newborn, Irie, and his fiancée, Erica Dickerson (daughter of NFL hall-of-famer Eric Dickerson), for making him a better person.
Then he presses play on his upcoming album, which sounds as sinister and nihilistic as any murder music ever plotted. He raps about homicide the way Hemingway wrote about deep-sea fishing or Kobayashi eats hot dogs.
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We're sitting inside his spacious studio in North Hollywood. Gibbs previously recorded in a vertical plywood coffin in his old downtown LA loft, but now, he commands an audio war room, with flat-screen TVs and a booth large enough to accommodate an impromptu posse cut.
He owns a home in the Valley, where he just picked up a shipment of his latest batch of merchandise. Multiple blunts circumnavigate the room, filled with “Freddie Kane,” his personal strain. “I've been in the streets forever, but I got my shit cultivated now . . . farms up north that I'm fucking with. I'm paying taxes on weed,” he says, laughing. He's wearing all black; a pair of dark glasses gives him the appearance of a scholarly mob boss. If he weren't already famous, you'd cast him as 2Pac in the biopic. “I want to open up a Freddie Kane lounge, where you can come and smoke,” he says. “Make it a tourist attraction.”
Over the past half-decade, there are rappers who have sold more records and received more critical acclaim. But few, if any, have been as consistently excellent. Gibbs has dropped a half-dozen projects, all good to great, culminating in last year's Piñata, a collaboration with Madlib that sold 50,000 units independently and earned ubiquity in year-end critics' polls, all without radio or a significant marketing budget. “Since I was on the XXL freshman cover in 2010, barely a day goes by without a different label trying to sign me,” Gibbs says. “I've turned down a lot of money, but I've made a lot, too.”
Raised impoverished in Gary, Indiana, Gibbs won and lost a football scholarship, sold enough dope to earn honorary Colombian citizenship, and eventually took up rapping while bored and competitive at a local studio. Interscope signed him, dropped him and left him for dead. After more street pharmacy and depression, Gibbs resurrected himself and rose to indie-rap stardom, dodging both industry bullets and lead ones. Last fall, he survived a shooting attempt after a New York City show.
He divided his summer among the domestic and international festival circuits, fatherhood, and the studio. Much of what he plays in his studio today is savage, post-56 Nights music. 808 Mafia supply the cracked-skull beats. Gibbs blasts with finesse and steroidal muscle, alternating between singing and rapping. It's highly melodic mortuary music.
“A lot of us take rap for granted, but it's saved me from hell and jail,” Gibbs says. “I'm putting everything in plain view, showing the human side. I've lost more homies to jealousy than to the streets lately. Every day, I'm still amazed. I had a nightmare that I was mopping floors and that this Freddie Gibbs thing was all a dream. When I woke up and told my homie about it, he looked at me, laughed and said, 'Yeah, right.'”
Freddie Gibbs performs with Curren$y at the Observatory, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana, (714) 957-0600; www.observatoryoc.com. Mon., 8 p.m. $22. All ages.
See also:
The Top 10 Rappers in OC
10 More of OC's Best Rappers
Top Five Female Emcees in OC
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