The video for G Perico’s “G Shit” is nearly a year old, but his jheri curl is so immaculate that it immediately offers the rare timelessness known to Eazy E, DJ Quik, The Egyptian Lover, and the entire Penthouse Players Clique rolled into one. This is a great rap video because it tells you everything you need to know from song title to street signage in the first seconds. Broadway and 108th. Ghetto birds in the air. Cop cars slithering past. Or as G starts the song: this that G-shit, this that me shit, G run around on that ‘fuck the police’ shit.
Nipsey Hussle pops up too, operating as a Splinter Samurai, asking G to make a pick up. This is the sort of LA gangsta rap that will continue eternally or until people stop asking where you’re from. In its cold-blooded directness, there’s something almost soothing. This is indelible as Fat Burger and Randy’s, the Slauson Swap Meet and Dodgers hats. With a little bit of shrimp feasts at the Stinking Rose on La Cienega thrown in (talking shit to the valet as he pulls the car up.)
Gangsta rap as LA birthright.If YG’s sonics channeled Battlecat and Daz, this feels like a contemporary update of Ruthless and early Quik. G as the real one with the heart of the gangsta and the mind of a pimp, who didn’t just pop up, which is the entire point. You can’t just enter and imitate the slang or the accent. You can’t get the access to these blocks until you’ve earned it. In case, there was any doubt, when the cops finally run up on him, the stash is elsewhere. You can’t survive if you’re not savvy. As E-40 once said, you gotta out-smart the po-po, and G Perico raps like he learned all the right lessons.
