Editor's Choice: Album of the Year

FREDDIE GIBBS & MADLIB - PIÑATA (Madlib Invasion, 2014)

It is understandable that an album which debuted in March could slip the mind in year-end discussions nine months later. Even more understandable is letting a project slip the mind when its lead single precedes album release by nearly three years. The first taste of collaboration between the prolific Madlib and Gary, Indiana's Gangsta Gibbs was eligible for the year-end discussions of 2011; “Thuggin’” served as a perfect entry theme for the duo to showcase the heights of each man’s skill set. Gibbs twirls first hand accounts of a life lived harder than most, on top of a Madlib beat so characteristically un-Gibbs, with delicate picking strings, warped and accelerated until they became unrecognizable from the source material.

The wait, while extended, allowed for Gibbs to vary the lifetime’s worth of experience he chose to put on the hours of available tape. Instrumental discs issued up front by Madlib meant that Gibbs could take his time living, and then writing the stories for his share. In the years that followed, his apprenticeship under Young Jeezy soured, giving rise to an overt call-out on “Real”. On “Knicks,” he will “shoot (his) trey eight at police” but by the time he hit the studio for “Broken” he was ready to grapple with the fact that his own father was a member of Gary’s corrupt police force.

Any depth of personal exploration Freddie Gibbs exhibited would be lost had he verbalized them over run-of-the-mill beats. It is Otis Jackson’s production that gives Piñata its mood; smooth yet aggressive, timeless while very much not of this particular time. “Scarface” gets us started with sirens and a two note bass loop that feels like the ambulance is hitting successive dips in the road. On “Harolds” he again speeds a lethargic Rose Royce guitar to match the rapid delivery of his counterpart, whose voice doubles for the bass line. Madlib manages even to color in the margins, filling the hellos and goodbyes of his tracks with excellent moments, most notably repurposing Biggie’s “Sky’s The Limit” intro for the similarly upward bound "High".

As a partnership that had limited face-to-face time, the success of the duo once branded MadGibbs was reliant on assistance. Excellent appearances from Gibbs’ peers, protégés, and predecessors give Piñata the strongest and most well rounded cosign of any album in recent years. The album’s victory lap was a “Knicks” remix, worth mentioning both for its guests and for its excellent accompanying imagery. When it comes time to close up shop, Madlib sets the production to snarl, Gibbs takes a deep breath and spits his lines once more, content to let the supporting cast take us out. <PM>