The late 2010s have been a tumultuous time for 03 Greedo. In 2016, after six years of floating his Auto-Tuned melodies on the Watts mixtape circuit, he was arrested on drug and firearms expenses that originally got here with a 300-year jail sentence. The litigation didn’t cease his fixed stream of music, which struck a nerve nationally with the discharge of The Wolf of Grape Avenue in March 2018. That April 30, he accepted a plea deal for the fees and was sentenced to twenty years in jail—one other in a lengthy line of rap stars whose ascents hit the turbulence of the American authorized system.
Greedo spent the previous 4 and a half years behind bars, an eternity in rap time, earlier than his launch on parole final week. He reportedly recorded greater than 3,000 songs earlier than the beginning of his sentence, and launched a fraction of that quantity over time he was locked up till the music drip stopped with the three-track 03 Inna Key EP in August 2021. He opens Free 03, his first post-release tape, the identical method he has prior to now: from behind the gravelly static of a jail cellphone. After an ominous automated message from the jail cellphone firm, he laments the rap icons misplaced whereas he was away—Younger Dolph, PnB Rock, Takeoff, and fellow Angelenos Nipsey Hussle and Drakeo the Ruler—earlier than brushing the grime off his shoulders to start his new period: “It’s in all probability my final lil’ tape the place it’s gon’ have this sound,” he publicizes. Free 03 blends this celebratory post-prison rush with the emotional fallout from his sentence: a group of songs that grooves and seethes, at all times remaining centered on greener pastures.
Provided that Greedo has been out for lower than every week, it’s secure to imagine Free 03 is a mixture of songs from that stash of hundreds and others recorded throughout his final days in jail. The tape combines totally different types and moods to create what’s basically a Greedo sampler, like 2018’s sprawling God Stage in miniature. “Took a Little Minute” and “No Free Options” decide to hard-nosed, virtually breathless rapping over rattling drums and pianos; the bubbly horniness of tracks like “Pourin” and “I Can’t Management Myself” shares house with the slinky paranoia of “Breakfast.”
Many of the vocals on Free 03 are clear and crisp, which makes the handful of tracks recorded via the jail cellphone all of the extra jarring. “Right now” turns a croaked interpolation of the Ice Dice basic “It Was a Good Day” right into a center finger to pretend shooters and crooked cops. On “Hype,” Greedo’s breakneck verse and ad-libs—all recorded over the cellphone—are interrupted by a “you have got one minute” message from the cellphone firm. Even on the verge of Greedo’s launch, closing monitor “If I Die” performs out as a listing of his fears (“One among my niggas will in all probability fuck my child mama”) and dying needs (“Go away [my casket] open, even when my face get blasted”). The track’s haunting “hope for the perfect, put together for the worst” mentality is mirrored via Free 03’s frenetic sequencing. Longing, concern, and pangs of harm dovetail on each verse.
