PINATA 2 X LP

REPRESS – RELEASE DATE – 23rd April 2021

Featuring Danny Brown, Mac Miller, Earl Sweatshirt, Raekwon, Scarface, Domo Genesis, AbSoul, Polyester the Saint, BJ The Chicago Kid, Big Time Watts, G-Wiz, Casey Veggies, Sulaiman, Meechy Darko & Freddie Kane.
Freddie Gibbs is the product of violent, drug-laden streets but unlike most rappers with similar resumes, he brings the block to the
booth without inhibition or an exaggerated rap persona. Piñata, a 17 track collaboration with producer Madlib, is the best distillation yet
of his transparent approach to making music, combining an at times stark honesty with electrifying talent as a lyricist and performer.
Piñata is “a gangster Blaxploitation film on wax,” says Gibbs, who came up on the streets of Gary, Indiana, the disregarded city
previously best known for producing Michael Jackson. Here he is joined by Mac Miller, Earl Sweatshirt, Raekwon, Scarface, Domo
Genesis, Ab-Soul and a host of others in setting his soliloquies of the streets alongside film snippets and dusted funk, soul and prog
musical tapestries. While this is the latest in a series of single-artist collaborations for Madlib, after Jaylib (J Dilla), Madvillainy (MF
Doom) and the street-centric O.J. Simpson with Detroit’s Guilty Simpson, the pairing is unique as it is the first time for Gibbs working
with just one producer. On Piñata, where Gibbs can shift from textbook lessons in robbing and drugging on trackslike “Scarface” and
“Knicks,” to perhaps the album’s most personal song, “Broken,” a collaboration with Scarface, who, along with Tupac, DMX and 50
Cent, make up the rapper’s own Mount Rushmore of MCs (“You’re getting a hurricane of all those motherfuckers hitting you at once
when you listen to Freddie Gibbs,” he says). “Deeper,” a Gibbs favorite and the third single from the album after “Thuggin’” (2012) and
“Shame,” (2013) is an ode to hip-hop in the mold of Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.”; “High,” featuring Danny Brown, is selfexplanatory and just what you would expect from Gibbs, Madlib and one of Detroit’s finest; while on “Real,” Gibbs addresses an old
score just as Michael Corleone settled all family business on baptism day. As a producer, Madlib, quite simply, is music, and ten years
into his career—a time when other artists become comfortable—Gibbs remains restless, focused, with an eye on the competition and
their position relative to his ascent. This is because mentally, he’s still on the corner hustling, which would be the downfall of the
average rapper. With Piñata, Gibbs confirms that he is anything but average. SIDE A 1. Supplier 2. Scarface 3. Deeper 4. High ft.
Danny Brown 5. Harold’s SIDE B 6. Bomb ft. Raekwon 7. Shitsville 8. Thuggin’ 9. Real 10. Uno SIDE C 11. Robes ft. Domo Genesis &
Earl Sweatshirt 12. Broken ft. Scarface 13. Lakers ft. Ab-Soul & Polyester the Saint SIDE D 14. Knicks 15. Shame ft. BJ The Chicago
Kid 16. Watts ft. Big Time Watts 17. Piñata ft. Domo Genesis, G-Wiz, Casey Veggies, Sulaiman, Meechy Darko, & Mac Miller