There's a great line on 'Deeper' where he abruptly gets introspective after he confronts a woman who got pregnant by another man while Gibbs was in jail-'Maybe you's a stank ho, maybe that's a bit mean/ Maybe you grew up and I'm still livin' like I'm sixteen'-and a taut verse on 'Broken' that address the supposed irony of having a cop for a father ('I'm a crook and you crooked, that's all we had in common'). Gibbs is nothing if not an anti-bullshit activist, even if it means casting the occasional doubt upon himself or staring down his own contradictions. Funk-fusion and soul jazz breaks bubble and blister in the heat, throbbing like a running man's pulse, and Gibbs states the facts as he sees them. His stories of a talented man making his way in a bleak environment are brought up without either glamorization or moralizing, but they still feel human. Many of Gibbs' lyrics on Piñata ride a line between pride in his own resilient hustle and ambivalence about what he did to succeed-maybe not guilt, but at least a concerted effort to confront his colder impulses. There's a deep awareness of how the embattled dealer from Gary has and hasn't changed on the way to becoming an L.A.-based enthusiast's favorite-renowned enough to get Scarface and Raekwon on his record, but for reasons that run deeper than just having famous co-signs. But his tendency to let the beat inspire certain facets of his writing has resulted in a record that, true to the underheard yet memory-stirring undercurrents of Madlib's production source material, is fueled by a certain kind of grown-man reflection.
Piñata isn't a major lyrical departure from the last-real-gangsta-standing attitude that's kept Gibbs defiantly his own unfiltered self over the last five years.
The question, then, isn't whether Gibbs and Madlib make a compatible match, but what that match winds up motivating Gibbs to say.