Gucci Mane: "Trap House"

Earlier today, I saw that someone on favoritesite-of-mine rapgenius.com referred to Gucci Mane by the epithet "intellectual trap rapper."  Like you, my first thought was "Wait, what?  Gucci Mane sucks and is terrible and very dumb."  I am a constant re-evaluator, so it occurred to me that I may have somehow misjudged the Ferrari Boyz affiliate and that I should maybe give him another chance to prove himself.

This blog gives me just the chance I need to do that.  Gucci mentions Shaq in his song "Trap House," so now is as good a time as any to figure out if there's anything intellectual about how the Ice Man gets down:

Well.  There you go.  He loves to "smoke weed" and to "shoot dices."  Also, he stole the "high like giraffe pussy" from Ludacris.  Stealing lines from Ludacris is the opposite of intellectual.  I think that settles that.  Glad we had this talk.

"Money long like Shaq feet."


Explanation: In conjunction with the hustler-phrase "make money stretch," the idea of money being "long" ties both the notion that there is a great deal of it and the notion that it can be made to last a long time.  Gucci Mane is claiming that his money is so long that it can only be compared to something of extreme length, like the feet of Mr. O'Neal.

Awkwardness of Reference: Gucci is a pretty awkward guy, mostly because he has a tattoo of an ICE CREAM CONE ON HIS FACE.  But there's nothing spectacularly awkward about this line.  I'd say it's one of the least awkward lines in a mostly awkward song, actually.  3 of 5.

Cleverness of Reference: Nope.  Nope.  2 of 5.

Appropriateness of Reference: One thing I do like about this Gucci line is that it talks about Shaq's feet instead of his hands, which seem to be the area of focus for most Shaq-body-part-referencing rappers.  For those of you who don't know (hopefully everyone), Shaq's feet are about 15.5 inches long.  By comparison, a dollar bill is roughly 6.15 inches long.  This means that, were Gucci to have money literally as long as Shaq's feet, he could have, at most, 5 bills.  The largest US single bill denomination was 1929's $100, 000 Woodrow Wilson bill.  Ignoring the fact that these bills were not circulated amongst the general public (and that they are worth far more than their face value because of their collectibility), it would appear that Gucci could, at most, have $500, 000 at his disposal.  While this is a good deal of money to me, it's not particularly impressive in the rap world.  So, fail.  2 of 5.

Shaqness of Reference: But has Gucci, at least, maximized his financial possibilities by choosing the NBA's largest feet?  Unfortunately, he has not.  Pistons legend Bob Lanier had slightly bigger feet than Shaq, coming in at 6.3-ish inches long.  Of course, at most, this would allow Gucci an extra bill, which would still leave him poor by baller-standards.  But it's worth noting that Shaq was not even the best choice here.  2 of 5.

And now we all know approximately one thing about Woodrow Wilson.

FINAL SHAQ SCORE: 9 OUT OF 20.