Executive produced by future NBA Hall of Famer and Snapchat rap A&R LeBron James, it finds 2 Chainz exploring things he’s danced around his entire career. As he provides more context for his story than ever, he rewrites the rule book on winning, opening up about his life as certified dealer to rap stars, critiquing the broken collegiate athletics apparatus, and warring against Uncle Sam. In that regard, it is his most cogent and organized album by far, and his most thoughtful one.
The album is proposed as the rapper’s rejection of the very premise in the title, and in asides and outros he does occasionally question this bifurcation of black liberation, but the music mostly tracks his own path to prosperity through a minefield. As one of a few people at the center of the rapper-trapper-athlete Venn Diagram (joining alums like Cam’ron and the Game), someone who found recurring success doing at least one as a result, he is in a position to anatomize the process. This construct 2 Chainz embraced in his youth and followed to stardom-that there are only two permissible prospective paths to success for black kids looking for a way out of the ghetto, one of the more well documented ideologies in rap history-is one he reevaluates on said album, Rap or Go to the League.
The College Park native had turned to rap in search of a “legal hustle,” he said, to “stay out of jail and stay out of the grave.” His dream route from D-1 prospect to NBA franchise player didn’t ever pan out, but he eventually found his way to the All-Star game anyway: Last year, he allegedly spent $1 million on a blimp that flew over the Staples Center in Los Angeles. He’d sold dope in the meantime, and for much of his life he was a felon before he was legally an adult.
The Atlanta rapper rewrites the rulebook on winning on his most thoughtful album.Ģ Chainz formed his rap group Playaz Circle in 1997, the last year he played college basketball at Alabama State.