Jeezy

One Liner:  Classic trap rapper from Atlanta

Wikipedia Genre:  Trap, Southern hip hop, gangsta rap 

Home: Atlanta

Poster Position: 6
Weekend Two Only.
Friday at 7:30.

IHG Stage.

Thoughts:  Jay Wayne Jenkins, who used to go by Young Jeezy before he got all old and stuff was born in South Carolina but is better known as being one of the big Atlanta-area rappers.  He is one of the guys who is credited with pioneering the trap music style for mainstream audiences.  As he was coming up, he signed with Bad Boy for a period of time and was in the group Boyz n da Hood, but Def Jam came after him as a solo artist and signed him in 2004.

His first three albums - Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 (2005), Thug Motivation 102: The Inspiration (2006), and The Recession (2008) were all commercially and critically successful, with the latter two both topping the Billboard 200.  The first big hit from those albums was "Soul Survivor" (featuring Akon), which now has 160.1 million streams.

He has a very distinctive voice - so gravelly.  That track does nothing for me.  Funny that it was such a big hit, because it just seems like run of the mill stuff now.  I do really enjoy the screencap they used for the YouTube video up above, because it makes him look a little nuts and like he might be about to try to kiss me with crossed eyes.

Then the big hit, and still his biggest streamer today, is "Put On," which features Kanye West.  247.4 million streams.

14 years ago.  Still complaining about record high gas prices.  I really like it when he laughs - those HA HAs are a million feet tall.  I have that song in my Popcorn Rap playlist that I use all the time.  Funny how that video makes it sound like the song is about like being a good American or something, meanwhile he's rapping about having expensive jewelry while people are getting foreclosed and going to the soup kitchen.  Confusing.

Since those first three, he has released approximately 800,000 more albums, but none have been as successful as those first three.  2008's Can't Ban the Snowman, as an example, has only three songs with more than a million streams. 2006's Snowman has one.  2006's I Am The Street Dream has one.  2009's Trappin' Ain't Dead and 2010's 1000 Grams, Vol. 1 have zero.  But then 2011's TM:103 Hustlerz Ambition was a hit and jumped him back into the charts.  I think he just has to name every album with that Thug Motivation title structure...  The top track from that one features Ne-Yo and has 47.8 million streams.  "Leave You Alone."

Random aside that is freaking cool - after Hurricane Katrina, he apparently opened up his own home to give people displaced from their homes a place to go.

By 2014, I was starting to do this psychotic blog, and so I started checking out his stuff as it got released (well, some of it anyway).  Going back to those reviews to see what I had to say, I'm afraid that Jeezy wasn't doing it for me.  Here are four of those reviews.

Jeezy - Seen it All: The Autobiography. 2014.  What is it with rappers and their extended album titles? Jeezy (used to be Young Jeezy, but I guess he grew up) has five solo albums since he became popular, and three of those five album titles involve a colon. I also have to note that he apparently skipped the second course in his "Thug Motivation" coursework, seeing as he released "Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101" in 2005, then "TM: 103 Hustlerz Ambition" in 2011, with no mention of how he got the course credits to just skip right over the 102 level class. [ED. note - I guess maybe Spotify didn't have that second album available, because that joke doesn't work now!]

Maybe the lack of that class in Thug Motivation theory is why I am unimpressed with this new album, but pretty uninteresting stuff. "Seen It All" is the single, which likely gains significant popularity by having Jay Z on the track, but Jay Z isn't going to save this song from being boring. More likely, the opposite. Try it out for yourself:

Yawn. You two are super rich and you used to sell drugs and still know more than anyone else who has ever sold drugs. Good work.

Jeezy - Church in these Streets.  (2015)  I'm shocked that this album isn't named Thug Motivation: 104 Ballerzzz Fo Sho.  I guess he ran out of educational material to follow up on his last few classroom titled albums.  19 songs, and the album feels like it is 9 hours long even though it is only 62 minutes. Jeezy has put out a few good songs in the past, but I don't hear anything on here that sticks to my ribs. The most listened-to on Spotify is called "GOD." (in 2024, at 7.8 million streams)

Yaaaaawn.  I have no clue why 3 million two hundred thousand people would have listened to that song.  Maybe Jeezy just opened his own computer and put that track on repeat and then left it alone for six months.  I won't keep this album around.

Jeezy - Trap or Die 3.  (2016)  Is it really that hard to come up with a new title for your album?  I bet I could think of 5 new puns using the word "trap" that he could put to use immediately.  Trap Smear.  Trap My Bitch Up.  Trap Crackle Pop.  Don't Worry Be Trappy.  Admiral Ackbar's Favorite Album.  I mean, those 5 took me less than a minute.  Does this guy really need to make 3 albums named Trap or Die? The correct answer is no.  As for the tunes, yawn.  I will give it one thing, this album made the woofer on my desktop speakers thump and rumble for real.  I had to turn down the bass levels just to avoid my office sounding like a '92 Cutlass Supreme driving down Crockett Ave.  He's got a few guest stars on here (Lil Wayne, French Montana, Yo Gotti) but none of those guys save this album from being boring.  The top track, with 8.1 million streams (up to 47.8 in 2024), is "All There," which features someone called Bankroll Fresh. I love that for a rapper name.  Makes me think of the Pillsbury Doughboy being a badass gangsta.

I can't say anything bad about that video now, because little kids acting hard like adults is amazing. That kid repping his hot cheetos is a boss ass little kid.  But the tune is more whatever - not for me. And he has a Chris Brown song, and I've come to hate the Chris Brown songs.  I'm not even that worried about the guy being a scumbag woman-beater, I just don't care to hear him sing anymore generic hooks.  This one can go.

Jeezy - Pressure.  (2017)  Now that is an interesting question.  Among garbage male rap-song-hook-singers, do I hate Tory Lanez more than Chris Brown?  How can one world contain this much hatred?  I think Brown still takes the cake, but Lanez is awful and horrible and blood-pressure-creating as well.  And his name is stupid.  This album ALSO gets a hook song from Trey Songz.  This is America in 2018.  Kill us all.  

I'd say that some of the tracks on this album have a good general feel - good beat, nice flow over the top, rough and rugged.  But then a lot are pretty mediocre and weak (first and foremost, the ones with the crappy R&B hooks).  The top track is "American Dream," which features both J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar, so I'm not so sure that Jeezy is responsible for those 7 million streams (up to 50.5 in 2024), or if this isn't a product of Kendrick's name being associated.

Good track.  Jeezy's verse is good, J. Cole actually sounds pretty good, but Kendrick's sounds kind of like a throw away.  Like this: "These streets made for ballin' (yeah yuh), Ten toes ain't for fallin' (yeah yuh), I hear the world callin', Tell me if ya all in (tell me if ya all in)."  Nope, pretty weak.  The album closer ("Snow Season") has a nice swagger to it, and "Cold Summer" is pretty cool sounding.  But all of these, lyrically, are pretty plain.  I'll let this one go.

I did not review 2019's TM104: The Legend of the Snowman, 2020's Twenty/20 Pyrex Vision, 2020's The Recession 2, 2022's SNOFALL, 2022's GOATED: Jeezy, 2023's But I Don't Forget, or 2023's I Might Forget, but not many people listened to those anyway.

BUT!  A Tiny Desk Concert!  In 2024!  That is wild.

That is pretty damn cool - with the strings behind him and the live drummer going after that drum machine.  I don't want the audience participation though...  Dig the vibe of that "Bottom of the Map" song.  Hell yeah.  Still not saying anything worth a crap, but the feel of that swagger is good stuff.