Just a week and a half ago, Indiana rap veteran Freddie Gibbs teamed up with the Alchemist for the collaborative LP Alfredo, one of the year’s best albums. To many of us, Gibbs is a major artist who is simply not capable of making a bad record. But Gibbs is also a working underground rapper with a habit of showing up in places where you might not expect. Just recently, for instance, Gibbs has teamed up with the previously unknown-to-me California rapper Spank Nitti James on a new track called “Disappear.” It goes.
“Disappear” is built on a minimal electronic handclap and a weirdly gorgeous synth-drone that recalls the halcyon days of cloud-rap. As a rapper, Spank Nitti James fits the recent West Coast underground mold. He’s a motormouth who veers all over beats without slowing down. That style works for a mournful track like “Disappear” and it makes a nice complement to Gibbs’ classical rigor. Gibbs, of course, is as masterful as you’d expect: “Every time I hit the kitchen, I would Pyrex and raise it up/ Mayweather vs. McGregor, we was fucking some paper up.”
In the video, Gibbs and Spank Nitti James rap hard against a blue sky in the sand dunes above some kind of exurban housing development. “Shirtless with a facemask in the desert” is a good look for Freddie Gibbs. Watch it below, via 2 Dope Boyz.
Right now, “Disappear” seems to be a YouTube exclusive.
