Pooh Shiesty - Shiesty Season Deconstructed Album Drum Kit
 
Bout a year ago, Pooh Shiesty was lying in bed when an Instagram DM from Gucci Mane popped up on his screen. He didn’t believe it was real until he hopped out of bed and bolted to his dad’s house to show him the text. Shiesty wasn’t flooding the streets with mixtapes—Gucci had only heard one song of his: the Tay Keith-produced “Main Slime.” But here Gucci Mane was, reaching out with the intent to sign him to the New 1017.
Shiesty made his formal introduction on the label compilation Gucci Mane Presents: So Icy Summer, with immediate standouts “7.62 God” and “Monday to Sunday.” It was clear that Pooh Shiesty was the best in his recruiting class, but a solo record was nowhere in sight. After months of anticipation, the Memphis rapper finally tries his hand at a full-length project with Shiesty Season.
Pooh Shiesty has proven himself to be a supercharged battery on singles, and the massively front-loaded Shiesty Season doesn’t give you a chance to forget that. The opening one-two punch of “Shiesty Season Intro” and “Back in Blood” sets a high bar to clear for the remaining 15 tracks. Pooh and Lil Durk form an Edge & Christian-level tag team on the latter. The combination of a looped piano scale and drums on “Back in Blood” makes for one of the album’s simplest yet most memorable beats. “Yeah, you know who took that shit from you/Come get it back in blood,” Pooh Shiesty taunts, punctuating the line with his signature “blrrrd” adlib. Durk doesn’t just match Shiesty’s bravado—the Chicago rapper takes complete control. “His ass playin’, bitch I’m really icy/Pooh Shiesty that’s my dawg, but Pooh, you know I’m really shiesty,” Durk smugly raps. “Back in Blood” was far from unknown when it was originally released in November, but the music video tossed gas onto the flames, making it his first Billboard charting single and No. 1 on Apple Music Charts after passing “the license girl.”