2008: The Year of Young Jeezy (Or Young Jeezy Surrogates)
The-Dream ft. Young Jeezy: "I Luv Your Girl (Remix)"
Shawty Lo ft. Ludacris, Young Jeezy, Hunt, Akon, Red Cafe, Plies & Lil Wayne: "They Know (Remix)"
Rocko ft. Young Jeezy, T.I., Boo & Big Kuntry: "Umma Do Me (Remix)"
Usher feat. Young Jeezy: "Love In This Club"
from Usher's forthcoming untitled album
America is not finished with Young Jeezy. Not by a long shot.
Arguably the three biggest songs in hip hop and R&B at this very moment -- Rocko's "Umma Do Me," Shawty Lo's "They Know" and Usher's surging "Love In This Club" (no. 1 at iTunes in just three days since release) -- have found ways to utilize or emulate Jeezy's rasp and, in many ways, redefine what constitutes the sound of a rap hit. Shawty Lo -- who is, by all accounts, a gaudier, gauche Jeezy -- is a stylistic beast, burbling personality tics all over his records ("I can rock it a capell-o!"). Rocko is something of a blank slate with a monster hook, jacked from Jeezy's groan, obviously. And it's interesting that Usher, who is grown and married now, would use Jeezy to enliven his new single, rather than his old running mate Ludacris. Luda got to play the side part on the strange Rich Harrison-produced leak, "Dat Girl Right There." That was the weird song. Jeezy gets the Polow-produced pop hit. Whereas Jeezy was intense and in many ways threatening to rap's social mores ("An adlib here, an adlib there, fuck it, adlibs everywhere") on his first two albums, now he's become an insitution and a model. Call it lowered expectations, diminished skills, personality over substance, charisma over character, etc. It doesn't matter, this is where we're at with rap today. The-Dream, another stylistic monster, now has Jeezy passing through a remix of his "I Luv Your Girl" intoning "Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama" and "Free Big Meech" within the space of one bar. "I Luv Your Girl" is neither political or criminal and yet Jeezy sounds perfectly reasonable at the outset of the song. Ay.
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