FREDDIE GIBBS

Freddie Gibbs is an incorrigible cutup. We’re on a Zoom call to talk about his new album, Soul Sold Separately, and I feel like I’m having an asthma attack. All sense of propriety has gone out of the window and we’re only a few questions in. The Gary, Indiana rapper set out to derail the discussion from the very beginning and he’s dangerously close to succeeding. I’ve got to get things back on track. I ask a question that feels relevant to the album’s concept, turning one of the many extremely funny interludes on him. The album is based around the theme of Freddie and his friends taking over the top floor of a swanky Las Vegas hotel, a la Smokin’ Aces. However, things have gone awry at the fictional SSS Hotel, as illustrated by the increasingly unhinged voicemails Freddie receives over the course of the album. The final interlude features a panicked missive from Warner Records' Julian Petty, with whom Freddie signed in the summer of 2020. Julian begs Freddie, his manager Lambo, and Warner A&R VP Norva Denton to turn the album in after three years. “You guys are way over budget,” he warns. “Room service is non-recoupable.” “What have you guys been doing in the SSS hotel that's got you so over budget?” I wonder, not knowing whether to hope for an honest answer or more hilarity.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: PAUL L. CArter

EDITION 19 OCTOBER 2022

OCTOBER 21, 2022

BY: AARON WILLIAMS

“Hookers. Lot of hookers.” And just like that, I’m once again gasping for air as Gibbs chuckles away. His affable demeanor sells the crude humor like a stand-up comic, provoking a reluctant audience by crossing the bounds of polite society and inviting them to join him in the wild political incorrectness. It’s a trait that has served him well throughout his long, winding road to this, an album he calls his official “debut” after releasing no fewer than eight projects – some of them even Grammy nominated – since 2013. After all, with as many ups and downs as he’s faced in his career, keeping a sense of humor can help sustain an artist through the tough times and contribute to the sort of longevity that has allowed Gibbs to outlast poverty, prison, and rap beefs galore. Of course, the primary driver for many of his feuds has been that scathing sense of humor. Not everybody can take a joke; for most of 2022, Gibbs has received almost as much attention for an increasingly contentious conflict with Buffalo rapper Benny The Butcher as he has for his album. It isn’t something he’s interested in talking about today. Suffice it to say that Freddie’s joking jabs didn’t go over as well with the much more serious-minded Benny, who isn’t used to being the butt of anyone’s jokes, let alone someone with whom he recently collaborated. But Gibbs himself doesn’t mind catching a few strays. Over the past few years, as his profile has risen from underground phenom to critical favorite, it’s become the custom of fans online to roast him nearly constantly by comparing him to pretty much any other bald Black man in the public eye. For his part, Freddie takes the jokes in stride, coming as close to addressing his Benny The Butcher feud as any other time during our interview. “Oh, I can take the jokes,” he says. “That's the point. If you can dish it out, you got to be able to take it. That's why when one of those rappers try to come and be crazy, I just burn their ass with jokes and they be looking stupid and then they get mad because they be getting laughed at. I ain't even got to do all the, ‘I'll fuck your baby mama,’ and all that old gangster shit. I don't got to do none of that, man, I'll just make you look silly. I'm a comedian at the end of the day.” But every comedian has their dark side. More than one funnyman in the past few years has revealed a struggle with anxiety, depression, and other mental and emotional illnesses or issues. Comedy can be a coping mechanism. As funny as Freddie is both in our interview and on his new album, he’s more than willing to open up about his trauma and the lasting effects it’s had on his mental health. Asked how he was able to tap into that vulnerability on Soul Sold Separately in light of his normally gangster presentation, he replies, simply, “Depression.”

To understand why an internationally known, critically acclaimed rap star might feel this way, you have to go back to his humble beginnings. Gary, Indiana is like most Rust Belt cities – it has seen better days. Freddie Gibbs – born there 40 years ago as Fredrick Tipton – missed out on the city’s thriving “company town” era. Instead, the Gary he knows is blighted by urban decay, with few opportunities for the city’s remaining but dwindling Black population. Like so many urban youth with few outlets and pessimistic outlooks for their futures, Gibbs turned to the streets for employment – where he incidentally remained deep into his rap career. On Soul Sold Separately, Gibbs raps about still being knee-deep in the drug game despite the growing attention. “When I made ‘Fuckin' Up the Count,’ ain't had no Audemars yet, I was rappin' and hopin',” he recalls on the paranoid “CIA.” It’s telling that in 2015, when that song came out, he’d already featured on XXL’s prominent Freshman Class of 2010 and been signed to two record deals that ultimately imploded. The second, which he’d signed with Jeezy’s CTE World, flamed out in extremely public fashion, leading to one of his first big rap beefs after he lashed out at Jeezy in interviews and on records over his hurt feelings from the way things worked out. Addressing the need to continue hustling despite his burgeoning career, Gibbs says, “[Rap] is such an expensive thing to do. That's why most of these rappers got investors and things of that nature. I was never wanting to have none of that. I had to be the big homie, I had to be the rapper, I had to be the talent, the executive, all of that. So for me, it was like, ‘Shit. I'm doing what I got to do and I got to do everything.’ You know what I mean? But I was cool with that though.” However, like many major rappers forced to go independent, he took valuable lessons each time he suffered a setback. As he points out on “Rabbit Vision” from SSS: Me and Jeezy still ain't spoke in years, but I got love for him Could've talked it out, but I spoke out, I let it get to me Showed me I could be a fuckin' boss, best thing he did for me

As Gibbs revealed on DJ Bootleg’s Kev’s podcast recently, the two men were eventually able to resolve their differences after years of tension thanks to a chance meeting at an airport. “It was one of the most beautiful things ever,” he recalled. “I been put it behind me, but I had to see him. And then when you look back, man, it wasn’t really nothing. That was fucking a music disagreement… I think that was just a misunderstanding, a miscommunication.” He elaborates in our conversation, “Like I said on the song, I didn't handle that situation correctly I don't think. It was sad for me, too. That was a depressing situation to be with your favorite rapper and then not be with him the next day.” However, there was a more lasting impact that he had to wrestle with in the years between his CTE deal and his eventual breakout. “After I left Jeezy, nobody would really sign me,” he says. “I thought that Jeezy would be my ticket to putting out my first major label release. But 10 years later here we are and now I'm putting it out. So I just think that I, like I said in the song, I needed the growth and I grew all the way up and made the best album I could. Because I could have put an album out on that label then and probably not got the attention that it needed. And I probably wasn't ready. I probably didn't build up the following enough yet. But god gives you things when you're supposed to have them. And I think that the timing was perfect for right now.” Unfortunately, he suffered another setback before that happened – one that contributed to the state of depression at the core of the hedonistic narrative of his major-label debut. In 2016, Gibbs was arrested in France after being accused of sexual assault in Austria while on tour the year before. He was ultimately released after three months behind bars when evidence cleared him of the accusations, but the isolation of being locked up halfway around the world took its toll. “I was in a real depressed state when I came home from Europe,” he recalls. “When I came back I was like, ‘Man, I don't even wanna rap no more.’ I just felt like I ain't had the support of the rap community. When I was over there I felt like I was alone. I felt like didn't nobody real fuck with me like that. I still be feeling like that to this day. I'm not in the rap game. I rap and shit but I feel like I'm in my own lane. I don't feel like I'm part of the community. I don't really fuck with too many rappers. But I just felt like when I was going through that thing, I was going through that thing alone, you know what I mean? And that was a painful thing to do. I don't really wish no shit like that on nobody.” Even worse, he says, the ordeal left a lasting imprint on his biggest cheerleader. “I tell n****s this all the time,” he says. “My mom’s first time flying out the country was to come see me in prison. That shit burn me to this day. Now when I go to Europe and shit like that and I be like, ‘Mom, go here with me,’ she don't even want to go. She ain't even get locked up but she got PTSD from that shit. She won't even fly no more. I could just imagine the pain she felt flying over to come see me in a fucking prison. For some shit that I ain't even do.

The first sense that things were starting to turn around for Gibbs came in 2019, when he reunited with Los Angeles underground producer Madlib for Bandana, the sequel to their fan-favorite 2014 collaboration, Piñata. Something in the ether shifted. Perhaps it was the excitement of his re-teaming with a creative partner with whom he’d made his splashiest project or maybe it was the clever rollout, which saw them present the new project as something of a film sequel (incidentally, a comparison of the covers of Bandana and Soul Sold Separately suggests more narrative connective tissue). Then, like a shark that has already taken the first bite of its prey before coming back for the kill, Gibbs again returned to a familiar creative well. This time, he teamed up with another acclaimed Los Angeles producer, The Alchemist, with whom he’d collaborated alongside New Orleans rapper Curren$y on 2018’s Fetti. Tongue firmly in cheek, he titled their comeback project Alfredo, evoking the mafioso leanings of the film The Godfather while cleverly Frankensteining the two collaborators’ names together and linking the title back to the previous work. Perhaps this is the beginning of a Freddie Gibbs cinematic universe? Gibbs certainly approaches his work with them in that way. “Everything that I make I try to make it like a film, not just an album,” he explains. “And when I approach it like that, Madlib and Al, they provide the score. Doing whole projects with them just shows that I know how to intertwine everything, themes we like. When we're creating an album, I'm not just creating a list of songs for you. I'm creating a world for you to enter. That's what I did with Alfredo. I feel like we did that with Bandana and Piñata. I want to create the experience of film.” That commitment to craftsmanship paid off; in 2021, Gibbs and The Alchemist were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. And although the Golden Gramophone eventually went to Nas (ending the rap pioneer’s decades-long drought at the prestigious awards ceremony), Fred took the L in stride. “I might have lost today but I’m undefeated in court!” he joked at his watch party. Besides, it gave him a win where it counted, redeeming the years of toil in his mother’s eyes. “I think that was the most shining moment of my career,” he says jovially but earnestly. “When it come to music shit, that's what my mom knows, the Grammys and award shows. So to see her face light up…That's why I do it, man. I made her proud. She don't know nothing about no rap, So for me to come up, for me to be like, ‘Yo, I'm nominated for a Grammy,’ that's big to her. That's some shit she could brag to her friends about, you know?”

Gibbs’ renewed musical success also arrived at the same time as he began to receive notice for his acting chops. And while his IMDB page is a little light right now, the roles he has netted are notable for their range. There’s the role as the cockeyed gangster Cousin Buddy in 50 Cent’s Showtime crime drama Power Book IV: Force, where he swerves between unintentional hilarity and ruthless menace. Meanwhile, over on Peacock, he plays cheapskate casino manager Chauncey, stealing scenes from seasoned comedians like Sam Jay, Zack Fox, Langston Kerman, and the late Jak Knight on the criminally overlooked Bust Down. But he stands out the most in Down With The King, in which he portrays… well, yes, a rapper, Money Merc, but where he also imbues his character with pathos and interiority as he acts mostly against himself. Merc is disenchanted with the rap business and after being sent to the country to work on his album, he takes a shine to the simple life, learning about farming and wrestling with the choice of whether or not to walk away. “I feel like the character was a little bit more emotional than I am, but I think that I played that shit to a T,” he boasts. “It was a lot of emotions involved with this guy and he was by himself, so I had to do a lot of acting alone. I think that sharpened me up a little bit.” He’s hungry for his next role already. “Yeah, I'm taking the Ice-T route,” he half-jokes again. “I'm gonna play a crooked cop like Denzel. Anything that I could slide into, man. My favorite actor is Samuel L. Jackson. So whatever role he play, put me in a movie with him, hopefully.” When I suggest he might make a great Marvel character, he reverts to full-on comic mode again. “Hell yeah. Crack Panther.”

For now, though, the role he’s finding himself settling into is the one he’s been playing all along. Although rap seemingly comes as easily to him as breathing (“I think I got a third lung,” he cracks), being a rapper is less so. The whole persona, the flash, the excess, the tough-guy image that you have to sell until the point where you might very well face the consequences of a lifestyle you want nothing more than to leave behind – these can often feel like swimming upstream for the earnest artist. After all, the meaning behind the casino theme of his new album comes from the philosophy he taught himself during his decades balancing both rap and the thug image it often perpetuates: “Life’s a gamble.” Freddie Gibbs has already taken all the chances. He’s crapped out and he’s hit the jackpot. He’s on a hot streak now, but he refuses to take it for granted. “I'm just grateful for being where I'm at in my life,” he says. “But no, I can't go out struggling. I feel like I always got to go out swinging.” For once, he’s dead serious.

The concept of a supergroup isn’t new, but it’s never without its intrigue. Artists who’ve thrived on their own come together to form a new project, that when done the right way can grow their success exponentially. More importantly, fans of each artist are over the moon. Recent unions have included Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars’ funk-pop Silk Sonic duo, indie stars Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus’ mighty Boygenius trio, the phenomenal rap pairing of El-P and Killer Mike on Run The Jewels, and now on their second trip down the highway, the super-Texan collaboration of Khruangbin and Leon Bridges. Unlike the mainstream splash of Silk Sonic, the femme-forward space that Boygenius had to carve out for themselves, or the previous history that Run The Jewels had with each other, Khruangbin and Bridges’ union is more akin to the relative obscurity of 1975’s Gil e Jorge. It’s an album where Gilberto Gil and Jorge Ben Jor, two titans of Brazilian samba and tropicalia, recorded music defined less by its tightly-produced magnifications of each artist’s distinction, and more about a spiritual and improvisational alchemy that developed in the studio devoid of any outside forces. With Gil e Jorge, fans of both went nuts. It was an incredibly unexpected, but wholly welcome joining of forces. And that’s exactly what’s in the air right now with Khruangbin and Leon Bridges as their second EP, Texas Moon — the companion piece to 2020’s wildly popular Texas Sun — comes out on February 18th via Dead Oceans.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Paul L. Carter

EDITION 11 FEBRUARY 2022

OCTOBER 21, 2022

BY: Adrian Spinelli

Contrary to popular belief, Russ isn't the antagonist that people think he is. It's easy to see how this misconception became so widespread, though. Here's a list of euphemisms that I have personally used to describe him in the five years since I first reviewed his major-label debut, There's Really A Wolf: abrasive, brusque, controversial, emphatic, and outspoken. To his credit, he doesn't deny any of those descriptors. In fact, his reaction is more amused than anything else when he hears this list. "I take full accountability and responsibility for anything I've said and anything that's come from it," Russ says during a lengthy Zoom interview. "And I stand on everything I've ever said. That's why I haven't apologized for it, because I meant it at the time. Could my approach have been softer and more polished? Yeah. But I don't have media training. I don't have mentors who are industry vets or whatever telling me how to talk. This is just raw and uncut." Over the course of the past several years, the New Jersey-born, Atlanta-based rapper has drawn the above descriptors from both critics and fans alike. This is mostly thanks to his unfiltered, no-holds-barred attitude toward sharing his opinions during interviews. Russ has proven to have vocal takes on everything from modern rap’s fascination with pill-popping to the virtues of remaining independent in a music industry that has become more artist-friendly than ever.

It probably doesn't help that these missives are delivered with the same cavalier dismissiveness as his unapologetic explanation for them. To his credit, they come from a pure place: Russ' unabashed love for the art and culture of hip-hop. And recently, he's begun to mellow out a lot. Narratives take a long time to change in entertainment, something Russ knows very well. He isn't holding his breath for a reevaluation coming any time soon. Today, though, he's with his family, enjoying the unseasonal sunshine by his pool "eating Chick-fil-A." As he reveals over the course of an hour-long conversation, this is his usual state of being and where he's most comfortable. Even though he's blowing up in the wake of well-received releases like Zoo, Shake The Snow Globe, the Chomp EP, and his recently released full-length follow-up, Chomp 2, he's actually as humble as can be, surrounding himself with family and friends rather than industry hangers-on and sycophants. This is how he stays grounded and staying grounded is the main thing to which he credits his success. Now, with a decade-long string of independently released projects behind him and a slew of promising future opportunities ahead, Russ is willing to pause for a moment. He’s able to take stock of his career, his popularity, and turning 30, all while reevaluating his own relationship to the success that has come on his own terms.

Russ – born Russell James Vitale in Secaucus, New Jersey in September 1992 – grew up as an avid fan of hip-hop, inspired by his love of records from Eminem, 50 Cent, and Lloyd Banks. In fact, it was Eminem’s 2000 MTV VMAs performance of “The Real Slim Shady,” which was inspired by the song’s video and saw the rapper surrounded by doppelgangers, that proved the first time Russ recalls having his mind blown by the genre. The impact of Eminem’s complex wordplay still resonates in Russ’ music to this day, as he layers his modern releases with intricate double entendres. “I wrote the book on independence, I’m on my third presidential,” he barks on his most recent release to date, “What Are Y’all.” It’s not just an excellent example of his gift for lyrical wizardry – the reference to copping Rolexes from the proceeds of his self-funded rap career also slyly name-checks the author of The Declaration Of Independence, Thomas Jefferson. It’s also a concise summation of his philosophy of self-determination even in the face of resistance from fans, labels, and the rap game itself. Russ started his professional rap career at the age of 19 in 2011, after co-founding the imprint Diemon with his friend Bugus at 17 and releasing a mind-boggling number of mixtapes independently. Three years and eleven tapes later, Russ began gaining traction when he started releasing a single a week on SoundCloud – a practice he’s continued in some fashion to this day. He’s staunchly, stubbornly stuck to his principles ever since, even through a stint on Columbia Records, where he released three albums in four years. It’s safe to say that this approach – and Russ’ pride in expounding on it nearly every chance he gets – is a large cause of the friction he’s met when it comes to his perception from fans and media personalities. In 2017, shortly after the release of his major debut album, There’s Really A Wolf, Russ caused a stir online when posted a photo of himself wearing a T-shirt reading “How much Xans and lean do you have to do before you realize you’re a fucking loser?” It felt like a call out to the then-prominent wave of SoundCloud rappers such as Lil Peep, Lil Pump, and Fredo Santana, as well as their influential predecessors such as Future, Gucci Mane, and Lil Wayne. As warranted as his push-back against the prevalence of seemingly pro-drug messaging in hip-hop may have been – consider that since then, the culture has lost several outstanding artists due to drug overdoses, including Peep, Mac Miller, and Juice WRLD – Russ was criticized for the harsh tone of the counter-messaging and for lacking nuance in how he addressed the root causes of drug addiction.

Russ isn’t blind to the criticisms, nor does he discount the circumstances of his success. He straight up volunteers his thoughts on being a white man in hip-hop, taking care to point out his advice and observations come from a place of love for the art and its originators. “I do understand, though, that when you come into the game, especially when you come into the Black space as a white person with opinions that no one asks for, it's not going to be met very well,” he admits. “At the end of the day, I never said anything that was destructive towards the culture. Everything I said was an attempt to move it forward on a positive level. If I'm talking about ownership or if I'm talking about touring or... It's like everything I would say was always like, ‘oh, this would actually help everyone.’ It's not like I was pushing something negative. I wasn't moving around out here with a negative agenda. My agenda was positive. It was just that my approach was very like, ‘y'all got to fucking listen to what I'm saying, what the fuck is wrong with y'all.’ Obviously, that's not going to come across great, but I don't regret any of that at all, because I was 23, 24. If I didn't do that, I wouldn't be the person who I am now.” If he attributes this newfound awareness to anything, it’s that he’s on the cusp of turning 30 and has been going to therapy. He says that, given the opportunity, he would tell 2017 Russ to “breathe and take a step back every once in a while.” But he makes it clear that he doesn’t regret anything he’s said over the past five years because of that earlier stated awareness.

Writer: Aaron Williams @aaronsmarter Photographer: Paul L. Carter @langstoncarter Stylist: Miquelle West @miquellewest_ MUA: Tripoli Beard @smashedbytripoli Designed By: Daisy James @djamesdesign Assistant Designer: Carlos Sotelo Olivas @barlosx

FREDDIE GIBBS is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Look 1 - Jacket: Palm Angels, Shirt: Kidsuper Studios, Pants: Kidsuper Studios, Shoes: Airfores 1's Look 2 - Sweater: Nanushka, Pants: Supervsn, Shoes: Rhude Look 3 - Jacket: Bode, Hat: Marni, Shirt: Rh45, Pants: Death To Tennis