The Jam: In My Hood. The Artist: Freddie Gibbs.

Freddie Gibbs’s music and persona provide an intriguing perspective on the drab wastelands of the post-industrial Midwestern United States.  He comes from Gary, Indiana.  A city which is perhaps most famous for being a particularly disagreeable dump of a city and being the setting of The Music Man, an abysmal musical to which my mother subjected me as a youth during a time when, I suspect at least, she was trying in vain to raise the daughter she never had. 

Back to the artist/song at hand, Gibbs’s “In My Hood” takes you inside the mind and hometown of the artist, and provides an account of a day in the life of Gary’s livest MC.  The song conjures a fleet of mid-90's Oldsmobile Cutlasses, which my father once proudly pushed, spewing pungent smoke culminating in an ominous gathering of hard-ass looking motherfuckers popping out to converse about the local goings-on under a grey sky while smokestacks stretch out like drab mountain ranges into the horizon.  “In My Hood” is off The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs, an excellent mix-tape worthy of a serious listen.  It is one of his earlier projects, and it displays a more  raw and unpolished Gibbs.  His more recent work, Str8 Killa no Filla  is ill in a more mainstream way, which is not to say that it doesn’t have its fair share of bangin’ cuts (“Oil Money”, “Slangin’ Rocks” and “National Anthem” to name a few).  Give Gibbs’s full opus a serious listen; you won’t be disappointed.  He’s a refreshing gritty Midwest juxtaposition (see also: LEP Bogus Boys) to Kanye’s ridiculously egomaniacal, obnoxious antics.