Peezy has been busy in the few months since he came home from a federal penitentiary. Free Rio is his first project where he is in total control of what’s going on in the studio, as his previous two tapes, Ghetto Rich Niggaz and Ballin Ain’t A Crime 2, were compiled from bits and pieces he left on a hard drive before he went in.
Despite Peezy at the wheel now, Free Rio feels unsure of itself. The tape starts as a continuation of his No Hook series, yet along the way it swerves this way and that, trying to break new ground. “The Intro” and “I’m Good, Pt.6” are good old Peezy, mobster, street hustler and baller, who if “Rap fail, then it’s back to the basics, I’m back to the scales buying razors.”
After that promising start, Peezy discards the no hook approach. When he switches to songs that are heavy on the hooks, things starts to go wrong. While early in his career he could easily pull off three above-average verses and a catchy hook, now Peezy barely tries at verse writing. Lazy songwriting got him grabbing a rhyme book for the dumbest and most obvious rhyme ever in hip hop music: bitch and shit. To use a “bitch-shit” rhyme in five lines in a row is a sloppy job for the artist who can pull 150 lines without a blink of an eye. “Free Rio,” “Million Dollar Nigga” and “Perc 10” are botched jobs. You can only assume Peezy was in a rush to get the CD out as soon as possible. The pressure was high, as the whole Detroit-Flint scene was on a rise while Peezy couldn’t join the hype in person, being locked up in the feds. Or maybe that prison stint scarred and damaged him: “I was sitting in a shoe they didn’t write me I was pissed.” When he got locked up, so many people turned on him, friends became enemies, he isn’t even sure if it’s safe to stay in Detroit now: “Why do you think we fly to Miami to go to live / Why do you think we watching the cameras and not cable.” Prison is the reason he sounds so angry on Free Rio, but bottled up emotions rarely translate into a good art. Too much raw feelings and not enough craft.
Yet when Peezy chooses more subtle ways to fight with his emotions, it works. “Build A Bear,” produced by Pooh Beatz, is a solid example of how a new, softer flow helps Peezy to evade the old problems and find the new balance between hooks and verses. He sounds relaxed and elevated, even humoring us by comparing himself to Eminem: “I got money long as 8 Mile, I feel like Eminem.”
It seems like a law of nature that one of the members of #Boyz Entertainment label has to be in prison. When Peezy was released, Rio Da Yung OG was sentenced to 5 years in the feds. Despite the title, Free Rio is not about Rio, but it’s a reminder that no amount of rap fame and money can make anyone immune to a prison sentence. And hip hop music continues to be an easy evidence for a prosecutor who wants to win a show trial.
