Tracks like “Off da Top (3am)” don’t fare as well, and scan instead like generically manufactured trap. “Biggest year of my career and I could feel the pressure, gotta follow-up,” he snips on “81,” a slapper of an intro and fine microcosm of Gotti’s honed simplicity. He isn’t known for clever lyricism, but Gotti can make a straightforward phrase sound agile.

This new project’s bookends are the most explicitly self-referential of the rapper’s big 2016, and he grapples aloud with his come up. The Art of Hustle, Gotti’s last album, saw him overextended, trying to frame himself in with a single statement-worthy piece of work *CM9 *instead is a snapshot of Gotti in stride. To be sure, Gotti has a better track record as a mixtape slinger than he does as a major-label rap album artist, and *CM9 *benefits from a low-stakes formula that’s less concerned with stringing together a narrative than it is with song-by-song quality control. Gotti’s latest seems to be billed as an album first, White Friday, and mixtape second, CM9, but he’s clearly folding his long-running *Cocaine Muzik *mixtape series into a newfound industry prominence, serving up his usual street fare with a bit more polish.

Youtube yo new yo gotti 2017