Specifically, he samples Uncle Snoop’s correct observation that Gibbs, following the likes of Will Scrilla and the Grind Family, CCA, and MCG’z, has given Gary, Indiana hip-hop more of an identity than any artist before him. Now I’m ready to box, like Apollo Creed.” The resulting album is a total knockout.At one point on his third album, Shadow of a Doubt, Freddie Gibbs samples a clip of his June appearance on Snoop Dogg’s beloved GGN series. Or, as Gibbs says: “‘Piñata’ was like I went in the gym with Madlib to train. ‘Shadow Of A Doubt’ is darker, more introspective and subtler, thanks to a cast of producers including Kanye West collaborator Mike Dean, Drake and Nicki Minaj fave Boi-1da. The beats were versatile – synthy prog, R&B funk – and it went deep on Gibbs’ hustler narrative (its original title was ‘Cocaine Piñata ‘). Last year, on his second album ‘Piñata’, Gibbs struck up a powerful alchemy with cult Californian producer Madlib. The pace drops later with the autotuned double-header of ‘Lately’ and ‘Basketball Wives’, but the overall impression is a bruising one. And on the even darker ‘Extradite’, a track reminiscent of jazzy experimental producer Flying Lotus, he asks: “//Trying to understand why I want to kill a man/ Ever seen a dead body in the streets then eat breakfast?//”. The incident feeds into Gibbs’ third album, which has the 33-year-old glancing back with gritty honesty at a gangsta life he thought he’d escaped, but still seems tangled in.Īfter growling into action with the menacing ‘Rearview’, on ‘F***in’ Up The Count’ he wonders if this life was always his destiny: “//Freddie, where your bills at? Teacher told me to get a job, I said ‘where the scale at?’//”.

Asked why someone might want to kill him he responded, simply: “I’m Freddie Gibbs.” But I’m still living,” Gibbs told the //New York Post// outside the Brooklyn building. On November 4 2014, someone tried to shoot Indiana rapper Freddie Gibbs while he was sitting in his car outside the Rough Trade record shop in New York.

Freddie gibbs shadow of doubt