The Pink Drifter and His Gucci Gang
Lil Pump is probably the millionth rapper to come along and tell me he’s the chillest, the highest, the most unbothered person who has ever existed. It never quite lands. And yet there’s something about this particular pink-haired stoner from Miami that made me watch the video anyway, which I count as a minor victory on his part.
The Gucci Gang video delivers exactly what it promises: weed, girls, a tiger on a leash, and about thirty seconds of actual content stretched across three minutes by sheer confidence. The trap production is blunt and loud. The lyrics are genuinely not trying. What carries it is the spectacle of someone who has completely internalized the idea that looking like you don’t care is itself a form of charisma, and then committed to that idea harder than anyone with slightly more self-awareness ever would.
His self-titled debut album entered the US charts at number three, which I find more interesting than the album itself. The guest list reads like a roll call of people who want proximity to whatever energy Lil Pump is running on—Smokepurpp, Lil Yachty, Chief Keef, Rick Ross, Gucci Mane, 2 Chainz. Lil Uzi Vert counts himself a fan. ScHoolboy Q too. The approval of people I actually respect makes me wonder if I’m missing something beneath the surface noise.
Maybe the surface noise is the point. Trap has always had a strand of deliberately overwhelming excess—aesthetic annihilation as its own statement. Lil Pump might just be operating at the logical extreme of that tradition, so far past irony that the question stops being relevant. Either way, I don’t think we’re done hearing from him.