Do y’all know what a good Italian dish is? Fettuccine Alfredo. The thick noodles, the cheesy white sauce, and the finished overall taste, it’s alchemy how it was made! While making fettuccine is pretty easy, the harder part is making your own sauce. It is a bit intricate to make and takes some time, but it is all worth it. It is crazy how something can seem so simple, but be super complex when you break it down. Welcome to the review of Freddie Gibbs and Alchemist’s Alfredo.
For those that don’t know, Freddie Gibbs is a rapper who is seriously underrated. Honestly, you don’t hear him in the top rappers of the 2010s convos a lot! Which is bizarre, because he has 2 amazing projects with the famous Madlib, Piñata and Bandana! He feels that way too, calling himself “Rap’s Black Sheep” in this very album. With that being said, this project right here has some amazing bars from Freddie Kane. It starts off with 1985, starting with a Bernie Mac skit at the beginning, and after that you truly get a feel for what this project is about. Freddie talks about how he smells the ‘caine burning from a mile away, and he feels like he’s Scotty because he beams the drug users up. Another thing that I noticed in this was the FLOW. Jesus Christ, this man’s flows are unreal. I was writing notes for 1985 and I straight up just started writing to the flow of the song. That thing TRAPS you. “Baby $hit” talks about how he’s rappin’, cookin’ dope, and potty training his baby boy, showing how he’s holdin’ it down in multiple aspects of life. He also discusses how he’s not trying to be hard selling dope in “Babies & Fools”. He has one of the best lines discussing how he does this for his kids. I won’t spoil it for you, just listen. My favorite song has got to be “Skinny Suge”. The song starts out with him talking about how he has nightmares of people coming to kill him, how his uncle was set up to be killed and how he was drunk with emotion and fear with a gun to his head, and how he’s a loner but still hates loneliness. There is so much to unpack that I probably should do a song review on it, but it is fantastic. “Scottie Beam” is the track where he calls himself the black sheep of rap, and this song right here is INSANE. All of these songs have a theme to them: don’t mess with Freddie Gibbs or his crew, and this one feels like the whole anthem of that. Plus, there is a Rick Ross feature, and Ross really does his THING. Ross is almost always bringin’ his A-game on features. Speaking of features,
The features on this are BEAUTIFUL. Griselda’s Benny the Butcher shows out on Frank Lucas, spitting about how dudes are out here cappin’ just so they can look hard and how he bought 2 of everything, Conway the Machine comes on Babies & Fools talking about how even though he got shot and has a broken jaw, he always knew that he would bounce back hard from this and how you probably shouldn’t mess with any of his crew, because he ain’t afraid to retaliate. My favorite feature comes on “Something To Rap About”, with Tyler, the Creator. This man… He comes in talking about how this beat sounds expensive and beautiful, how he used to be a Goblin, and how you got to watch who you are around. He obviously does it in a much doper way, but I just need y’all to listen to it, you will not regret it.
With all this said, there’s still another half for the album’s namesake. The Alchemist came in and produces beautifully on here. The samples he gets are top-notch, and it’s almost like the beat has a life of its own in certain songs. I would say that the best produced song is “Babies & Fools”. That “all of me” in the song is just perfect. All of the production makes you feel like you’re Freddie, and that is the mark of excellence right there.
Problems: There are none. Like, honestly, there aren’t any. Freddie came in with the best drug raps and varied it up, Alchemist’s production was amazing, and all the songs were fantastic. Ok, if I were to have one TINY nitpick… The album is packed with so much “good” that you’re exhausted when you get to the last song, and that’s still fantastic.
The ingredients for fettuccine Alfredo could be the noodles and the sauce, as that’s the simplest way to do it. Making the sauce is a bit more difficult and takes a bit more time, but you realize how well it pays off afterwards once you taste it. In a world where so many rappers would only choose the premade sauce, Freddie and Alchemist decided to get the ingredients and make it themselves. It paid off wonderfully. This album right here? It’s a 5/5.
Photo: Freddie Gibbs in Los Angeles
