Gee Slab Takes Stock in ‘Spread Game’

For native Nashville rapper Gee Slab, years of outstanding work led to a big payoff in 2020 in terms of visibility and he brought a lot of folks along for the ride. His professional relationship with Vibe editor-in-chief Datwon Thomas led to the creation of Tenn Toes Down, a handpicked playlist of Music City hip-hop that highlights the diversity of sounds and approaches in the local scene. 

As we head into an uncertain 2021, Slab is beginning to roll out a new suite of projects, beginning with a single called “Spread Game.” The track is a production of DJ Pain 1 that’s slow and melancholy but is constantly moving forward, emphasizing the feeling that the progression of events is inevitable.

The piece opens and closes with narration from the video game Mafia III, in which a Vietnam vet gets pulled unwittingly into his family’s crime business. In the sampled snippet, the character Father James Ballard reflects bitterly on the relentless cycle of cruelty and violence perpetuated by greed and systemic racism and classism. “The poor is considered morally corrupt while every excess of the powerful is celebrated,” says the priest. “There ain’t never gonna be another Dr. King or Bobby Kennedy.” 

It nicely sets up the lyric, in which Slab meditates on the other side of the coin, portraying a character who’s been hardened by his hard-won successes. “My favorite subject was turning nothing into something / How I did it, trusting intuition,” Slab raps, using the slow tempo to luxuriate in his drawl. “ ‘It’s just business’ / I finally understand that feeling / And I want millions as long as the money printing.”

Take a listen to the track in the below Soundcloud embed, and follow Slab on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for updates. You’ll want to mark your calendar for Feb. 8, when he’s set to drop a single and accompanying short film called “Triple Beam,” and keep an eye out for an even bigger project he has in the works called Nature Knows No Kings.