SOUNDTRACK: GUCCI MANE-Tiny Desk Concert #586 (December 12, 2016).
Usually when someone is popular I have heard of him or her. So I’m always surprised when someone gets a Tiny Desk Concert and I don’t know them (especially given his story).
Gucci Mane sounds kind of familiar, but I don’t think I’d ever heard of him before. So what does the blurb say:
Gucci Mane’s smile makes you feel like there’s still some good in the world. He’s really earned it, and that thing is infectious. We asked him to come to NPR because we wanted to be a part of the victory tour he’s been on this year: In the past six months or so, Gucci Mane was released early from the federal penitentiary; he proposed to his girlfriend on the kiss cam at a Hawks game, and she said yes; he’s releasing a total of three albums, all over which he celebrates his newly committed sobriety; he and Courtney Love look like they get along; and he remade “Jingle Bells.”
In this Tiny Desk concert, Gucci Mane performed with just his longtime producer and friend, Zaytoven, on piano. Their version of stripped-down is a minimal backing track and plenty of church-groomed trills. They performed with the understanding that everyone in the room knew their songs — one from 2009 and two from this year — and knew that this performance would represent a surreal dip into a parallel universe where ingenuity is rewarded, snobbery is gone and love is real. Gucci Mane agreed to this unlikely set as a gesture to those people — for remembering his work while he was away, and for cheering on his resurgence, his health, his charm and his singular nature.
Gucci does the three songs, “First Day Out,” “Waybach,” and “Last Time,” all accompanied by Zaytoven, easily my favorite stage name and the absolute highlight of this show for me.
Gucci Mane’s flow is a kind of slow drawl. It’s kind of charming and engaging. I find it really strange that he’s rapping over himself (I guess). But it’s so stripped down that it’s weird to hear his backing track so clearly. But that live piano totally make the show fantastic–Zaytoven has some amazing chops.
[READ: February 21, 2017] “Sinking Ships and Sea Dramas”
The introduction to this story was pretty fascinating. This piece is an except from a manuscript in progress inspired “in part by lines from the work of Ben Lerner, the poetry editor of Harper’s”
This was translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole.
I’m not sure what Lerner wrote that inspired this, but this “cycle” consists of 6 ruminations on death and the sea.
I. is about the band on the Titanic. How the ship sank so quickly that a pocket of air survived in the salon in which the band was playing. They knew only that if they stopped playing it would have plunged them into despair
II. concerns snow falling on Venice–snow that came from Africa and the rage that accompanied it.
III. is about Noah’s Ark. They say that God lost interest in his creatures and was ready to destroy or “withdraw from his creation” but it was Noah’s prayers that persuaded him to create a seagoing vessel to preserves one specimen from creation. However, a scholar from Naples argues that the translation contains errors. Braca (Italian for boat) is confused with the Hebrew word for a chest holding documents. God, doubting his creation, allowed Noah to transport a chest full of books–the only source of knowledge holding humanity together.
IV. is about Maxwell, the billionaire and his business empire which he cannot save. His bankruptcy is imminent and his position on the edge of his yacht is not accidental. It is postulated that since there is no capital punishment for financial collapse, that he must have been guilty of something.
V. is the saddest of the bunch. It is about a woman on a sinking ship. She is clutching her baby to her chest as she hears rescuers come closer. But her arms have gone numb as the rescuers arrive.
VI. Shipwrecked sailors off the coast of Africa saw a giant turtle come over the waves like an avenger. But they felt no guilt for they had never eaten turtle or even had turtle soup. Their tale was told to London paper, and no amount of speculation about it being an apparition could persuade them from saying that it was indeed a very large turtle: “That is what I saw.”
So this is an excerpt and I can’t decide if that means he’s going to flesh out these parts more or if there are going to be more parts. Each little section was interesting in its own way, but I don’t really see the point of it all.
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