The album artwork for The Ceremony depicts Kevin Gates sporting golden eagle feathers in his hair — feathers he says he was gifted by an Indigenous American chief after collaborating in “very sacred ceremonies [he] can’t discuss.”
Contemplating the title of the album, it’s clear that these ceremonies had a profound impact on Gates, serving to inform his life and his choices. Gates’ music has at all times had a motivational high quality to it, however The Ceremony feels extra triumphant than a lot of his previous work, as if he’s turned a nook and begun to settle right into a life he feels he may be actually happy with.
That isn’t to say The Ceremony is overly saccharine — he’s not channeling his internal Likelihood The Rapper right here. Quite the opposite, Gates’ fourth studio album offers with a number of the weightiest matters he’s ever tackled.
He’s making what he refers to as “actual medication music” on the intro monitor, “Ceremony,” the place he additionally states: “I hereby launch all the issues that not serve my highest self,” proper earlier than starting the primary verse. The Ceremony looks like Gates’ method of therapeutic and letting go of trauma so he can transfer ahead together with his life and use what he’s realized to assist himself, his household and people round him.
On “Letter 2 My Followers,” for instance, he raps about how melancholy and the sensation of inadequacy culminated in a close to suicide try. “Gave the world the very best recommendation I want I might give myself/ I want I used to be some place else/ Deeply I’m depressed, strain constructed up on my chest/ Want that I can heal at some point get my soul some relaxation,” he raps. You possibly can really feel simply how deep of a rut he was in from the inflection and modulation of his voice, with Gates sounding out of breath to the purpose that he’s virtually croaking at factors all through the track.
Coming instantly after is “Defend Youngsters,” which hears Gates ruminating on his personal less-than stellar childhood and the way he needs to defend not simply his personal youngsters, however youngsters in all places from environments just like the one he was raised in.
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Nevertheless, a concentrate on profound non secular experiences and critical topics don’t imply that The Ceremony is missing in terms of conventional — and, at this level in his profession, generally drained — Gates-isms like on “Walmart,” when he spits: “Quarantine nonetheless jumpin’, I’m retarded swear to God.” There’s additionally “Lil Yea,” the place he will get specific: “Kiss all in your crack, my tongue all in your ass/ Grip your waist and pull you round, proper earlier than I dick you down.”
However the album’s crowning achievement on this division is “Eater,” a monitor the place Gates imitates a lady giving him head by reciting the lyric: “She go, ‘Guck, guck, guck, guck, guck,’ my lil eater” a minimum of 12 occasions. In spite of everything, it wouldn’t be a Kevin Gates album with out juxtaposing off-color lyrics with heavy material.
Some lyrical missteps and some duds apart, The Ceremony principally succeeds as a cohesive, singular physique of labor, ending strongly with “Damaged Males,” the place he delves even deeper into into his interval of suicidal ideation: “At my daughter birthday celebration, I used to be considering leaving/ my son like this would be the final time he going to see me/ Suicidal pondering/ Coronary heart so heavy in my chest that it get tough when respiration/ Sacrifice in any respect to see you smile however you don’t see it.”
The evidently deep monitor looks like a end result of the album’s themes; it’s one closing blood-letting launch of trauma earlier than, as Gates says on the track’s intro, he “can begin [his] therapeutic course of.” However so far as anybody who’s heard The Ceremony can inform, it’s clear his therapeutic course of has already begun.
RELEASE DATE: January 26, 2024
RECORD LABEL: Bread Winner Alumni/Atlantic
Take heed to The Ceremony beneath:
