Bobby Shmurda – “No Time For Sleep (Freestyle)”

Bobby Shmurda – “No Time For Sleep (Freestyle)”

In recent years, a whole lot of rappers have gotten out of jail and headed straight for the recording studio to talk about how they were feeling. The “First Day Out” freestyle has been something of a rap tradition for about a decade now, but that’s not the direction that Bobby Shmurda went. In 2015, Shmurda, a teenage Brooklyn mixtape rapper, broke out suddenly when his single “Hot N***a” barnstormed the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. Mere months later, Shmurda and his entire G59 rap crew were arrested on gang charges. Shmurda, who took a plea deal in 2016, finally got out of prison in February. Since then, he’s done interviews and performed at festivals, but he’s only just now released his first song since getting out.

Today, Shmurda released a new track officially titled “No Time For Sleep (Freestyle).” It’s his first real new song since 2015, and it’s got a lot of the immediacy that we expect from first-day-out songs. The song’s dramatic, string-streaked production sounds like the kind of thing that was tearing up New York clubs in the late ’90s. Shmurda raps for six and a half minutes straight, never pausing for a chorus. This isn’t some grand manifesto. Instead, Shmurda spends most of the track talking about shooting people, with occasional asides about having orgies on private jets.

The Denity-directed “No Time For Sleep” video turns the song into a mini-action movie, with Shmurda and a couple of ladyfriends shooting machine guns and throwing grenades in a warehouse full of pyro effects. The gunfire is all CGI, and Shmurda often dances while shooting, which is pretty funny. There’s no reason why this song had to be this long, but Shmurda’s voice still sounds cool, and he looks like he’s enjoying post-prison life. Check it out below.

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