What I listened with: Wireless Bluetooth Headphones
Editor Rating: 10/10
The Bottom Line: I will go out on a limb and say this is 2 Chainz best album. He forced himself to not only be creative, but make music like never before.
There are some people who are simply destined to be famous. 2 Chainz could’ve been a very successful basketball player standing at 6’5, but instead he’s a very successful rapper. As Hip-Hop head I’m glad 2 Chainz chose the path of music, but more than likely 2 Chainz would’ve influenced the world either way. This isn’t uncommon, but it’s a great segway to how music and sports influence each other. We see the big name rappers courtside at the biggest games and you hear rappers mention the star athletes in their songs all the time. It is a cycle that is never going to end and it makes for great entertainment. What we don’t see a lot of is the ball players who make a successful career out of the music industry. Several have tried but to no avail. Then you have artists like Cam’ron, J. Cole, Dave East, and 2 Chainz who all could have played professionally but decided that a studio better suited them. We’re not here to debate who’s the best former hooper to make music, but if that conversation existed then we would have to examine the longevity of 2 Chainz’s career and how he has captured a second wind in music thanks to his latest effort, Pretty Girls Like Trap Music.
2 Chainz’ has been constantly working to redefine his image & brand in music, entertainment, business. He is still the man who brought us Good Drank, but he’s also the man who eats $300.00 Cheeseburgers for GQ while being a vegetarian, and PGLTM is new chapter for 2 CHainz and makes a big splash in a year with numerpus Classic albums.
It’s more so the culmination of the last three years of guest features and mixtapes that have set the stage for his prestigious third album. He’s become the cool uncle that you want to hang out with at all of your family gatherings, the one who tells you stories and gives you shots of alcohol while your parents aren’t looking. Hearing 2 Chainz tell stories about the trap, wild nights of fornicating with multiple women, and being slept on not only embody the DNA of this album but also who the ATLien is as a person. He tells these stories in comedic fashion yet there’s a layer of truth beneath these lines.
In less than three months, 2 Chainz will turn 40. You'd never know it from listening to Pretty Girls Like Trap Music though. Like nearly ever 2 Chainz and Tity Boi album before it, it's thoroughly modern, but beyond that, its nearly devoid of any awkward, out-of-character moments. Not once does Chainz feel like ATL trap's cool uncle, as Big Boi (42) often does on his new album.
On his track with Travis Scott the seamlessly blend together, and honestly provides something that Travis Scott’s music often lacks which is Bars. Although, guys like Travis Scott, Young Thug, and Future bring a melodic sound that is easy to duplicate but hard to duplicate will. In addition these artist have cult followings which should bode well for 2 Chainz streaming numbers. He's evolved alongside Atlanta rap music so seamlessly that he now seems like an immortal being sent here to inhabit trap music until it finally fades from popularity.
Now I hate for this review to essentialy be about the evolution 2 Chainz, but the fact of the matter is PGLTM was a statement album. 2 Chainz body of work before this album was more than enough to be cemented with other Atlanta greats which all know is great list. Since his Playaz Circle beginnings, and through his first, "I'm Different"-buoyed resurgence, 2 Chainz was always a better rapper than people gave him credit for. Joe Budden has always been a polarizing figure in Hip-Hop, but he hit the nail on the head while recently talking to 2 Chainz on his Complex show: “You are beloved by the niggas that can’t rap, and all of the lyricists-- not very many in that pocket.” Around his 2011/2012 rebirth with a new name, his skills manifested as effortlessness and simplicity that allowed him to open a verse with a line like "She got a big booty so I call her Big Booty" (which I got sick of seeing social media posts about this line and how Hip-Hop is trash these days) and then sneak inside jokes as clever as "True to my religion, two everything, I'm too different" into the verse's back half. He was splitting the difference between Young Dro's mid-2000s peak and hashtag rap.
PGLTM immediately shows us how far he's come in the past five years over the course of two marathon verses on "Saturday Night." Anybody that still doubts his abilities should be shut up by minute two of the album. The other most obvious evidence of 2 Chainz's progression comes on the Nicki Minaj collab, "Realize," where he hits lyrical home-runs like the double entendre "I'm underdog and you undermine" while Nicki's so 2000-and-late with that hashtag rap flow: "Checks, clear/Bible, swear." Nicki, who broke out just a year or two before 2 Chainz (not Tity Boi), seems to have been treading water for a few years while 2 Chainz has been keeping his ear to the streets and tirelessly practicing. There's a reason why, in the last couple of years, 2 Chainz has undergone the second resurgence he describes on "Saturday Night": "Everybody in the city say Tity done started back snappin.'"
Not only is 2 Chainz's pen game stepped up a bit from last year's fun-but-relatively-shallow trio of EPs, but this album also finds him devoting more time to autobiographical detail than ever, which he handles well. As the title would suggest, most of these stories revolve around the trap, where 2 Chainz probably hasn't been for years at this point, but the wise perspective he offers on it saves him from falling victim to the Danny Brown "I'm sick of all these n****s with their ten year old stories/You ain't doing that no more, n**** lying to the shorty" conundrum. In addition to storytelling intro "Saturday Night," we get "Door Swangin," an ode to his former place of business that includes the line "Had a felony before you knew what a felony was," and "Poor Fool," an origin story that reveals that his initial cause for trapping was his mother telling him, "You make some paper, then you make your own rules."
Musically, the album sounds modern without chasing trends like dancehall-pop or trap flutes, and there's even a Jeezy sample on "Trap Check" that smoothly transitions to stately piano you'd never hear on TM101. Mirroring 2 Chainz' maturation are these subtle baroque flourishes that often pop up on the second verse of many of the album's tracks-- the synth strings on "Door Swangin," the toy box harpsichord on "Poor Fool," the lush live bassline on "Rolls Royce Bitch," the elaborate percussion on "OG Kush Diet, the horn on "Burglar Bars." It's a perfect parallel for where Chainz is currently at in his career: staying in touch with the times without bending over backwards to conform to trends, getting gradually more stately and elegant with time.
The only thing that would lead you to believe that he's more than twice the age of a couple of the recent XXL Freshman is how effortlessly he flows, strings together bars, and tells his own story. Those skills come with time, and most rappers lose their swag long before its able to coexist with said skills.
