Very happy to find that this has a video, because now I can vote for it on year-end lists. Don’t know how I missed this back in June–must have gotten caught up in the overwhelming onslaught of terrible rap videos coming out every day.

I theorized about this previously when I posted about 2 Chainz on Tumblr, the website with the world’s worst archival system so I’m not going to try to hunt it down, but I think 2 Chainz ascent is almost a reaction to the Lil Wayne / Guccification of rap music & the extreme character of their voices. 2 Chainz plainspoken flow and straightforward lyricism balanced by his natural, gangly charisma, does feel unusual in the current state of rap eccentrics. And maybe the unspoken between-the-lines part of this is that people finally just got fed up with Gucci’s facial tattoo recidivism issue crazy ass and were just looking for someone who seemed just a bit more reasonable and easily understandable. Gucci was making the listener do too much work to understand him, and 2 Chainz is a comprehensible alternative.

Was the “Everybody Looking” video a baton pass? That was basically Gucci’s 2nd-to-last great official single, right (“What It’s Gonna Be” being the climactic final moment and logical endpoint)? Atlanta loves its tall rappers.

2 Chainz related, this is much better than I remember, but I’m not sure he’s topped this or this.