Gucci Mane has plenty of hustle, just not in concert
Rapper boring; songs cut short
Practically no one in hip-hop has more hustle than Gucci Mane.
The prolific rapper born Radric Davis has created around 2,000 songs since 2005. He was instrumental in establishing the trap sound and scene in his native Atlanta that, today, stands alongside Chicago as one of the centers of the hip-hop universe, home to Future, Migos, Rae Sremmurd, producer Mike Will Made It and other emerging stars.
And when the 36-yearold Mane got out of prison last year — he served three years on a firearm possession by a felon conviction — he released not one but three fulllength projects, with Alisters including Drake, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj lining up for guest verses.
All of which made his show at the Eagles Ballroom at the Rave Thursday a bit of a headscratcher.
Technically, there was hustle, with Mane running through 27 tracks, from his still-hot 10-yearold hit “My Kitchen,” which received the most kinetic reaction from the packed crowd, to last year’s Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Black Beatles,” his collaboration with Sremmurd.
Except Mane spent, at most, 60 seconds on a single song. And those 27 tracks he performed were smashed into a 50minute set — inexcusably short for someone with such a massive discography.
And somehow, the fire that’s moved Mane to constantly make songs, to jump on trends before they break big (he was jamming with flutes on “Back on Road” seven months before Drake did on “Portland”), was nowhere to be found on the Eagles stage.
Mane has suggested in interviews a post-prison rebirth; he’s happier, newly sober, in great shape. Those are all, of course, wonderful things, and given the context, the mild smile Mane frequently flashed Thursday was sweet to see. But frankly, he was a boring performer: casually strolling back and forth across the stage as he rapped, occasionally letting the prerecorded backing vocals do the heavy lifting, his calm presence diluting the urgency of his tracks.
Since getting out of prison, Mane’s proclaimed himself a “Trap God,” naming the tour after his nickname. It’s a borderline ridiculous moniker, but one Mane, and his fans, may have fully embraced. A god doesn’t need to prove itself to anyone, and neither did Mane Thursday, but his fans fawned over every song anyway.
Opener PlayboiCarti will have a lot to prove to justify the buzz behind him. The 21-year-old Atlanta rapper, who mixes traditional trap with oddball, melodic production, took the stage less than three hours before dropping his much-anticipated, repeatedly delayed, self-titled debut fulllength album. It’s a quirky, interesting listen, but Carti was bland in concert Thursday, his rote stage moves and flavorless flow making even a scant 15-minute set tedious.
Initial opener Dreezy was drowned out by distorted bass, the sound issues only remedied in time for the Chicago rapper’s final two songs. That didn’t have a great impact on the audience, though, which reserved its most energy for a recording of Chance the Rapper’s “No Problem” that Dreezy’s DJ played while she posed for a picture.