Album Review: Westside Gunn - FLYGOD Is An Awesome God
Whether one can put up with Weststide Gunn's style enough to tolerate, let alone enjoy any of his projects is a strict matter of taste. Even without mentioning the constant wrestling references which dominate much of his work, the New York rapper with a series of mixtapes entitled "Hitler Wears Hermes" is far from an easy sell, mostly due to one blatant aspect: his nasally, high pitched whine of a voice. It is this, combined with an occasionally lazy choice of beats, that made his 2018 album Supreme Blientele a chore to listen to, any merit provided by Gunn and his collaborators sapped away over almost an hour of dusty East Coast hip-hop. FLYGOD Is An Awesome God is, thankfully, much shorter an experience, yet largely no less dull of one; its highs less memorable and its beats only slightly less questionable.
To this record's credit, despite its relatively short runtime of barely a half hour, it often seems to cover much more musical ground than many of Gunn's longer projects. Despite much of its Madlib-influenced production being crammed full of lighthearted soul samples, the album opens on a much darker note (after an extended spoken-word interlude featuring Wu-Tang alumnus Raekwon, who couldn't be bothered to actually lay down a verse). The eerie piano loop and spastic vocal interjections driving Sensational Sherri set an incredibly ominous tone; even if Gunn's voice and constant ad-libs are are not the best fit, the guest verse from Benny the Butcher is appropriately dour: "My name in conversations with accomplished legends/Anybody that rhyme pathetic done got beheaded". The closer Lakers vs Rockets is similarly foreboding, though Gunn's more vapid lyrics and sluggish flow are much less bearable this time around.
The clear highlight is, of course, Gunnlib, proving that actually getting Madlib to produce your tracks works out way better than Supreme Blientele's blatantly inferior attempts to imitate his style. Perhaps not necessarily an all-time beat from the famed producer, but the soulful crooning and repeated intonations of "Right on the tip of my tongue" are still uniquely smooth, and Gunn flows capably on top of its ambient bass strumming: "Didn't hit 'em all, but it was close enough/Did it broad day, so you know it's us". Often, however, he fails to bring the energy required to engage the listener in his words, with tracks like Lunchin,Birkin, and Amherst Station 3 hampered by Gunn's lethargic drawl that sounds even lazier than the melancholy piano loops underscoring his lines. The reverie is only broken by the irritating gun-shot ad-libs and occasional wrestling sound byte; it's a formula that wears thin even within a single project.
Thousand Shot Mac, which has one of the more impressive sample-heavy beats on the whole album, is essentially a boasting contest between Gunn and his three guests, his brother and fellow rapper Conway among them. While they all largely perform admirably, the clear loser is Hologram, with absolutely atrocious bars like "I get higher than a war drone" and "Nike is the goddess of victory and that lit to me" being far from the worst offenders. The track is preceded by Ferragamo Funeral, a shorter cut also produced by Madlib that finds Gunn musing on the darker aspects of street life: "Ayo, buck fifty trouble, your face'll get bubbled/Started with a double-up and didn't get doubled/Pillow on your head make the MAC sound muffled." His voice may often be grating, but Gunn is still a capable MC, and in more succinct doses even comes off as amusing.
As a quasi-sequel to his debut album, FLYGOD Is An Awesome God is less a thematic or artistic progression than yet another entry in Westside Gunn's homogeneous catalogue. New listeners will likely not be taken with his shrill vocal style and incessant, offbeat interjections, but established fans may find their expectations adequately satisfied. Divorced from its lineage, the album is unfortunately a frivolous, divergent experience that occasionally impresses but rarely possesses the lyrical or instrumental flair to come of as anything more than irritating and tiresome. Gunn could probably coast on his East Coast heritage and WWF infatuation until he retires, but until he bothers to do anything more, a shorter runtime is about all one can ask for.
5/10
Favourite Tracks: Sensational Sherri, Thousand Shot Mac, Gunnlib