walking upstream…
Kevin Gates
photo: atlantic records · cc by-sa 4.0 ↗Kevin Gates
Kevin Jerome Gilyard was recording mixtapes out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, alongside hometown peers Boosie Badazz and Webbie when a 2008 conviction pulled him off the street corner and into a cell for three years, where he says he first confronted the depression he'd later put on record. He came home to a run of mixtapes, The Luca Brasi Story and By Any Means chief among them, built around a rap-singing hybrid that could turn from threat to open confession inside two bars. Signed to Atlantic after a management stint under Lil Wayne's Young Money, he broke wide with 2016's Islah and its platinum single "2 Phones." Gates has since watched that confessional Baton Rouge style pass down to YoungBoy Never Broke Again — the student now filling the lane he opened.
the sound in question
2015
2 PhonesKevin Gates
walk the tributaries ↓
Tupac Shakur1990s · West Coast hip-hop / Conscious hip-hop
In an April 2014 Rolling Stone interview, Gates rattled off the emcees who shaped his ear: "I always gravitated towards up north music. I always loved the lyricism, and I loved that it was witty." He closed that same list with Tupac Shakur, the one West Coast name among five East Coast writers. Gates has never spelled out which Tupac record he means, but the two share a habit: turning the tough-guy verse into a sung, unguarded plea — Tupac testifying to his mother, Gates testifying to whoever's listening — before the beat can finish making its case.
listen: upstream & here
1995
Dear MamaTupac Shakur
2016
Not the Only OneKevin Gates
listen forCue up "Dear Mama"'s opening verse: Tupac's voice drops the boastful register entirely, half-spoken, half-sung, riding a soul loop that never rushes him. "Not the Only One" works the same trick — Gates lets his pitch climb and crack over a slow piano, confession outrunning rhythm. Neither song raps so much as it thinks out loud, and that's the resemblance worth clocking: not a bar, not a hook, but the decision to let the voice go unsteady when the subject gets too close to home.
The Notorious B.I.G.1990s · East Coast hip-hop / Gangsta rap / Hardcore hip-hop
In that same 2014 interview, Gates put The Notorious B.I.G. first in his list of five, ahead of Jay-Z and Nas. He's never named a specific Biggie song as a model, but the two share a register: a rapper narrating his own worst nights — infidelity, threats, despair — in the same flat, matter-of-fact voice he'd use to describe the weather, refusing the genre's usual distance from its own darkest material.
listen: upstream & here
1994
JuicyThe Notorious B.I.G.
2015
2 PhonesKevin Gates
listen forPlay "Juicy" against "2 Phones" back to back and the kinship sits in the beat's shape more than the words: both loop a warm sample under a hook built for a car stereo, both rappers stepping back from menace to narrate a come-up in plain, conversational lines. Biggie counts the material things street success buys; Gates counts burner phones and the calls he keeps separate. Neither song is trying to threaten anyone — that restraint, over a beat built to be sung along to, is the shared move.
Eminem2000s–10s · Hip-hop / Hardcore hip-hop
Eminem made that same Top Five, and Gates has spoken elsewhere, just as plainly, about why he needs to make music at all: "music is my release," he told Vice's Noisey in 2014, describing how he processes a depression diagnosis he received while incarcerated. He's never tied that statement to Eminem by name, but it names the same territory Eminem mapped across a decade of records about his own self-loathing — an unusual thing for two commercially successful rappers to put at the center of a career rather than its margins.
listen: upstream & heresource: HipHopDX — Kevin Gates Lists Eminem & Tupac Among His Top 5 Emcees (backs Tupac, Biggie, Eminem influence naming) ↗
2002
Cleanin' Out My ClosetEminem
2013
Don't Know What to Call ItKevin Gates
listen for"Cleanin' Out My Closet" strips Eminem's usual jokes away entirely — a flat, aggrieved account of his mother and his own resentment, no punchline to hide behind. "Don't Know What to Call It" does the same thing over a hushed, minor-key beat: Gates naming a despair he can't fully explain instead of narrating a street story. Both songs work by refusing the genre's usual safety net of a joke or a flex — the discomfort is the point, and it's audible in how bare the production sits under each verse.