No one makes mixtapes anymore, they make farm teams. In baseball, the farm league is where professional baseball teams give prospective players a chance to compete with the promise that the good ones make it to Major League Baseball. Future’s DS2 biggest single (“Fuck Up Some Commas”) was released on his free mixtape Monster in October 2014, five months before it was serviced as a single. That’s what 2 Chainz’s TrapAveli Tre´ is: as much a showcase of new 2 Chainz material as a low-cost testing of which songs can make and or shape his forthcoming studio album. Just as Future’s DS2 is a sequel to Dirty Sprite, one of his earliest mixtapes following disappointing sales from his major label album Honest, TrapAveli Tre´ is also Chainz attempting to reconnect with his core fanbase by showing them he still beez in the trap.
2 Chainz released his sophomore album B.O.A.T.S. II in September 2013, a year after his debut album Based On A True Story. His debut sold over 600,000 copies in a year, B.O.A.T.S. II has yet to go gold after nearly two years. TrapAveli Tre´ is the third free project 2 Chainz has released in the last 15 months and this trend follows the main theme of the new mixtape: excess. Chainz has “been on the road so long, I forgot what kind of cars I got” (“Neighborhood”) and “get so much pussy, I got to sleep with a condom on” (“A Milli, Billi, Trilli”). 2 Chainz has eaten a $295 burger, slept in a $25,000-a-night hotel and used a $5,000 toothbrush in the past year as star of GQ’s video series “Most Expensive Shit” so this mixtape makes perfect sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGr4vMbE69A
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The excess isn’t solely in the decadence, to the contrary, Trap-A-Veli Tre features some of the most grimy, trap lyrics of his career. Over the booming bass and trickling keys of Nard B’s “Everything I Know,” 2 Chainz reminds listeners he “used to use my safe for a mattress/used to use my mattress for a safe.” The Kevin Gates-featured, radio ready “I Feel Like” includes a chorus that laments “sometimes you can make a million off a mixtape” but Chainz reminds the listener he’s still a “trap nigga on a pop tour.”
The production on TrapAveli Tre´ is very hit or miss with the hits sounding as good as any song 2 Chainz has rapped on and the misses being amateurish. B Wheezy, Mike Dean X and iBeatz’s “Neighborhood” beat pairs operatic horns with the dirtiest of drums for one of the most engrossing and diverse beats on TrapAveli Tre´. Nard B saxophone-laden “Blue Dolphin” is the album closer and is the audio equivalent of butter melting.
Producer Zaytoven must have drained his hard drive of his best beats when producing Future’s entire Beast Mode mixtape as well as DS2 standout “Colossal” because he gave 2 Chainz the Fisher Price beat kit. Sandwiched in between Fresh Jones’ haunting and pulsating 808s on “If I Didn’t Rap” and TM88’s drill music inspired, mechanical “Big Meech Era”, Zaytoven’s “Starter Kit” sounds like he just started making beats.
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https://youtu.be/Dbek_dHbJHw
The 16 track mixtape can be succinctly reorganized in two categories “Before Halo” and “After Halo.” Imagine calmly drifting through the codeine dreams of Dirty Sprite 2 and then midway through a trap version of Nas’ The Lost Tapes standout “Fetus” comes on. That’s how pleasantly polarizing “Heaven (Letter To My Unborn Son )” is: an intelligently written song from the perspective of 2 Chainz unborn son. With Street Symphony and 808Elite’s wobbly pulsating 808s and sparse synths, the sounds serve as a great backdrop for Chainz to give some of his most introspective lyrics ever. As his unborn son, Chainz gets critical of his drinking lean (“you looking like a fiend”) and how his lifestyle may not be conducive to good parenting (by the time I get bigger I’ll need a father figure”). But, it’s once the excess that has permeated the tape seeps into womb and even influences his unborn seed that Chainz delivers the best rhyme of the entire mixtape, one that perfectly marries his unconventional and unfiltered wit with a surprisingly high level of honesty:
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“Damn, daddy got a sports car / Damn daddy been wanting a little nigga / We got enough land to find Sasquatch”
Overall, TrapAveli Tre´ is an enjoyable project that outlines a new 2 Chainz. A 2 Chainz not-too-gone on codeine to not be critical but not lyrical enough to forgive lines like “time to clean up the spot, I’m talking DEEEETERGENT” (“GOAT”). Chainz needs to lock in with certified hit makers such as Metro Booming, DJ Mustard, London on the Track and anyone else that will give him fleshed out production to match the temerity of his boisterous claims of excess.
