On his most recent single, "Bitte," gzaa is laying down a manifesto. A grinding, genre-blurring track that sounds as much like a plea as a confession. "Bitte" is a stormy, unfiltered transmission from an artist who's through explaining himself. He is getting high, spacing out, and counting literal and metaphorical money.
"Bitte" makes plain gzaa's state of mind from the opening beat. He's 100k short, so save the advice and share the peace. The track throbs with frustration but never tips over into chaos. It's sculpted with purpose. GZAA veers back and forth between blunt commentary and disarming vulnerability, approaching the mental tug-of-war between ambition and escapism, peace and paranoia, reality and the dream of luxury.
The production of "Bitte" reflects gzaa's own contradictions. Sparse, atmospheric synths bubble under deep bass lines, and the track maintains a woozy, late-night energy. The minimalistic beat compliments gzaa's delivery. His delivery sounds off the cuff and almost stream of consciousness, but there is a calculated rhythm to how he spits. Every line has lived in terms of what he's saying. The thing about "Bitte" is that gzaa doesn't clean his thoughts up for surface-level public consumption. He doesn't filter. He doesn't ask for sympathy. He wants his baggy pants, his Marni slides, and his peace.
There's a tension running through the track that you can't deny. Whether it's his alienation from cultural norms, his cutting observations on closeness, or his obsession with the international flow of currencies, GZAA's mind is a world away or maybe, more accurately, a universe away, but there's no escaping the bind of survival and self-worth. "Bitte" is a smoldering combination of raw expression and mood. It's messy, but it should be like gzaa intentionally left the track unfinished to keep it authentic. And it is really brutally, beautifully so. If you're looking to see the world through gzaa's eyes, "Bitte" is the window.