Freddie Gibbs just surprised fans by announcing the imminent release of his third album, Shadow of a Doubt, the follow-up to Piñata, his collaborative masterpiece with Madlib. He's come a long way since midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik, but all the potential is right there on the mixtape's opening track, "Midwest Malcolm."
That mixtape as well as The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs, released three months earlier in May 2009, put Gibbs on the map and introduced a voice of stunning clarity out of the Midwest. As he tells us at the beginning of "Malcolm," "When the world becomes perfect, maybe I'll rap about that shit." Instead, he showed us the bleak warzone that is Gary, Indiana. And he did so with a southern-inspired smoothness and the reflective wisdom of a soul far beyond his years.
Check out "Fuckin' Up the Count," the first track off Shadow of a Doubt, which drops November 20. What's your all-time favorite Gibbs song?