Juelz Santana gets gritty on 'God Will'n'

By CASEY LEWANDROWSKI Published February 18, 2013 at 9:31pm Updated February 18, 2013 at 9:31pm

Roll a fatty, hop in the hooptie and crank your bass as high as it goes, because Juelz Santana’s highly anticipated mixtape God Will’n is cruise and muse music.

While fans eagerly await the drop of his long time coming album, Born to Lose, Built to Win, scheduled to release this year, they can enjoy this 18-track journey through Santana’s holy grail of gritty East Coast rap.

Despite collaborating with big name rappers on the tape (Meek Mill, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa and more), Santana still manages to craft his underground flow accompanied by classic beats and frighteningly raw lyrics.

This mixtape has undoubtedly everything that conservative critics find wrong with rap music. It promotes rampant drug use, disrespects women in unimaginable ways and glorifies violence.

However, it’s this exact recipe that makes God Will’n worth listening to, because it’s dirty rap music at its finest. Santana offers no apologies; only honesty and copious amounts of obscenities. His life is textbook hood and he’s here to articulate it through your speakers so listen up.

While some of Santana’s flows don’t give listeners much to ponder intellectually, tracks like “Nobodys Safe,” “Bad Guy” and “Shoot’em Up” will let listeners experience the intensity of gang affliated aggression as Santana raps about stackin’ bodies and protecting his “empire.” The quick glimpse into the egotistical and precarious lifestyle this rapper leads is arguably more enjoyable than if Santana had produced 18 tracks of thought-provoking lyrics.

With lyrics like “Wassup, don’t be a fuckin’ dumb-dumb / I get your whole clique hit for a lump sum,” Santana transports the audience to the streets of New York where life is hard, the women are easy and it’s better to stay on his good side.

There are ingeniously crafted lines on tracks like “Soft” featuring Rick Ross, Meek Mill and Fabulous, where the quartet sends a blatant “fuck you” to its competition. However, the poetic ego trip Santana takes becomes marginally repetitive farther down the track list.

The message loses its aggression by the time you get to weaker tracks such as “Blog That.” Let’s rap about how much your haters suck on Instagram? No thanks, Santana, leave that to the teenyboppers. Stick to what you know.

Overall, the mixtape accomplishes its mission and gets down and dirty. It’s this stereotypical roughness that makes it palatable because Santana not only celebrates his lifestyle but revels in it.
Good music, no matter what the genre, transports its listeners and creates the unexpected.

Santana manages to cultivate a sound that makes even a suburban brat feel like he or she is starring in his or her own version of 50 Cent’s classic Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ film. God Will’n is hard, loud and dirty. Most of all, it’s unapologetic.