Ok I’m a little bit late on this but Big Baby Gandhi’s mixtape Big Fucking Baby is so good I can’t let it pass by. The 21 year old Queens native has released my favourite album of 2011. I first heard about Big Baby Gandhi through my obsession with Das Racist and their musical coterie. It’s seems like all of Das Racist’s friends are either rappers or in bands. I have discovered through DR’s collabs and tweets: Danny Brown, Chairlift, Lakutis, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire and the now defunct and gloriously named Boy Crisis. I imagine they all met at Disney’s Camp Rock but set in New York and featuring haggard twentysomethings.
The mixtape is lo-fi, trippy and hilarious. It sounds a bit rough around the edges but that just adds to its charm. The fuzziness makes it seems intimate, it is music that you listen to late at night and let yourself be brought into the world of Big Baby Gandhi. The beats are a smooth mix of 90’s R&B and soul singers like Anita Baker. He raps about sex, social injustice and the internet with a half serious drawl. On tracks like ‘Been Around Ya Girl’ he alternates between an ultra cocky persona and insecurity. He brags that he has “finally located were the labia is at”. It makes him endearing which I guess is a weird thing to say about a rapper. Even his name is oddly self-deprecating. In the opener ‘Gandhi Mandhi Mandhi’ we learn that children used to mock him by calling him Gandhi Mandhi Mandhi. It’s hardly an insult to be compared to Gandhi so he subverts their ignorance and incorporates it into his rap name. The mixtape is full of clever and funny lines like “men are dogs ma that’s her dogma” in ‘Woof Woof’. In ‘Other Jackets’ he incredulously describes talking to a girl with cum stains on her jacket. He repeats over and over again “ What! You ain’t got no other jackets?” It makes me feel like I’m sitting in a weed stinking basement listening to a college student tell mental stories. But in a good way. And without having to enter a basement. Huzzah! He is one of the few rappers to make me laugh out loud on public transportation. If that’s not a resounding affirmation of quality I don’t know what is.
It was released by Diplo’s Mad Decent and Himanshu Suri’s Greedhead Music.You can download it at no personal cost here. http://www.maddecent.com/blog/big-baby-gandhi
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