http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/e/16711680/wshhSFdHyfIgX86j3OAI
Waka Flocka Flame – “Luv Them Gun Sounds” (Brick Squad, 2010)
Better-late-than-never video treatment for this, the definitive Flocka jam. I remember when I first heard this record a couple years ago being shocked by how aggressively amusical and bizarre the shit was. Stop you dead in your tracks what the fuck am I listening to type bizarre. The beat was buried by sporadic gunshots, the half rhymes delivered in between giant breathing gaps and mixed lower than the adlibs. I know some of the more conservative hip hop listeners see Waka as a destructive force but personally this is why I listen to music – to hear things that don’t sound like things I’ve already heard.
Today, in the wake of “Hard In The Paint” and “BMF” becoming unexpected radio hits and Lil B consciously turning the Brick Squad sound progressive, it a makes a lot more sense. Lately I’ve been thinking about how a lot of recent hip hop – street hip hop, which is to say real hip hop, that which hasn’t yet been polished by Jimmy Iovine – is entering a sort of punk period where technical competence is pushed completely to the background as a stylistic choice in favor of raw aggression and emotion. And then old people are like BUT THEY’RE ONLY PLAYING THREE CHORDS and young people are like duh. 1000 years from now “Gun Sounds” will be seen the rebirth of all this shit, a necessary reset. Well, either that or it’s going to be a footnote, overshadowed by very important hip hop pioneers Drake and B.O.B.
regardless of how the history books rewrite this shit into some hiphop rock the bells bullshit bizzaro version of history 1017 really is making some of the most game changing shit right now. The drake mold isn’t shit, it’s the easy route. what? fucking autotune your raps? when you compare it to the things like this the motherfucker is making holocaust movies trying to pull on your hiphop heartstrings while waka is just rolling where ever his aggression takes him.
