- US emcee Freddie Gibbs has been a personal and steadfast favourite of mine for years and counting. His previous full-length record, 2015's Shadow Of A Doubt was one of my favourite rap records of the year and it seemed like Gibbs might finally garner some decent, positive attention after years of producing great music with little to no fanfare outside of your real, dedicated hip hop heads around the globe.

Any and all goodwill that Gibbs had stockpiled instantaneously evaporated in June last year when the rapper was arrested and imprisoned on allegations of drugging and raping a woman. He was detained in France before being extradited to Austria and spent a major chunk of 2016 sidelined, dealing with that very serious and confronting situation, spending months in foreign jails before finally being completely acquitted of all charges.

You could say that every record is, of course, influenced by the personal trials, tribulations or even the general monotony of life, but on the latest offering from Freddie Gibbs, You Only Live 2wice, there's unsurprisingly absolutely no escaping the personal fallout from the events that could have seen Gibbs locked up for ten years in his prime. Back on his grind, Gibbs appears equal parts relieved, pissed off and most encouragingly, fired up beyond belief.

For a dude that doesn't mince words and beat around the bush, You Only Live 2wice sees Gibbs at his most personal and introspective;
his usual drug dealing, womanising musings are overshadowed by reflections on slowly losing his mind, incarcerated in Austrian prison: barely allowed to bathe, unable to traverse the German language literature available to him and suffering from weight loss as a side effect of his dangling fate and one would assume, sub-par prison food. Unlike his previous record, which featured a bevy of unique and distinct collaborations, there is not one guest emcee on You Only Live 2wice, Gibbs' lone voice is a powerful constant and the record is better off left undiluted.

Call it lazy, call it selective, but You Only Live 2wice feels like a long EP as opposed to a full album, and while that might seem like a criticism, it certainly is not: I'm a busy man with places to go and people to see and sliding in at just a tickle past the half hour mark, is the ultimate gangsta rap package for the modern human to digest. More likely than not this is the result of Gibbs trying to redirect some of the negativity and flip the switch back to what the dude does best: rap. On You Only Live 2wice, Freddie Gibbs flashes some rare emotion, and re-establishes himself as one of the best in the game today.

- Jay Edwards .