Album Review: Trap or Die 3 by Jeezy

Drug habits don’t always relate to the user. Dependence can also fall on the pusher as well. Something that Jeezy understands that wholeheartedly. For over a decade, The Snowman created some of the best street anthems Atlanta Hip Hop had to offer while evolving in small yet significant increments ….

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Jeezy's approach on his seventh Def Jam album is signaled clearly by its cover and title. As ever, there's nothing seasonal about this snowman -- like the rapper proclaimed on previous album Church in These Streets, hustling is year-round, nonstop business -- and the first two volumes of Trap or Die were mixtapes served to the streets. Volume three, released six years after the first sequel, seems to carry the weight of a proper studio recording, not a mixtape, though Jeezy said "It ain't an album, it's a way of life." This way of life is loud at almost any volume, seemingly designed to sound imposing in every setting.

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Eventually every rapper hits the point where they stop keeping up with the trends, either because they’ve lost interest in them or they’ve been left behind by them. It’s hard to tell which is the case for Jeezy. Perhaps he felt burned by the commercial failure of last year’s hitless Church in These Streets, a kinda-sorta attempt to engage with the modernist sounds of new Atlanta, or perhaps his heart was never in it, but on Trap or Die 3 Jeezy stops pretending to give even the slightest damn what listeners under 25 might be into.

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The realm of trap music — the bass and 808 drum-heavy sound wrapped around accounts of drug trafficking and criminality — has become representative of southern rap for the better part of the new millennium. A fresh crop of upstarts may be emerging on the scene and appear poised to become the new faces of trap, but Jeezy, who is considered to be one of the godfathers of the sub-genre, is intent on putting on for the older guard and showing the rookies a thing or two with his latest album, Trap or Die 3. The seventh studio album in Jeezy’s discography, Trap or Die 3, arrives a year after Church in the Streets, which some critics deemed an underwhelming effort, and a sign of the Snowman’s regression as a bankable star in rap.

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