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Album reviews Music

Freddie Gibbs

Eight years into a critically lauded career, Freddie Gibbs is well established as a reliable emcee unafraid of extending himself creatively. Pronto, a spare 12-minute EP, seems specifically designed to show off his versatility. 

Gibbs’s greatest strength is narration: he paints panoramic portraits of lives scarred by drugs, double-crossings and robberies, and often turns his penetrating gaze inward. On the best track, White Range, he coolly reminisces about his hardscrabble childhood in Gary, Indiana, in the first verse before flipping the second into an examination of a rocky relationship on its last legs. 

He seamlessly transitions from spitting in the first person to rapping from the perspective of his long-suffering girlfriend, who finally decides to leave him. “On the outside I’m too cool, but I’m broken up under cover,” he says, an apt description of his body of work. 

Top track: White Range

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