(1st round match-up 4
of 27)
Did I write intros each time, or not? I think I have varied.
Instead of an intro, picture this: you are sitting on a porch, first warm
spring Thursday afternoon (traditionally known as “little Friday” around here),
and you are awaiting the next write-up to arrive. Lavender candy-flake ’79 Pontiac
Catalina rolls up, slow as blackstrap molasses drip, and you assume while
noting how the paint scheme is as if plucked direct from redbud blossoms, “Ahh
yes, here comes Dirtgod Raven Mack with the latest Hip Hop Trios thing, of
which I don’t really need but will enjoy, maybe.” Except the Catalina rolls
right by, headed to a corner store existing on corner of world which is
invisible to you, anticipating a three-piece lake trout box dinner (actually Styrofoam,
and the grease melts the Styrofoam ever so slightly, which is seal of lounge).
And you are wondering about that car, who was driving it, how raggedy and
normcore your car is, and I walk up, because I have been walking all along, as
it is the truest way to ponder. And this is less an exercise (project, content,
whatever) in criticism than it is an act of pondering.
Ghostface Killah – Fishscale
(released March 28, 2006; #4 on 2006 Pitchfork Albums of the
Year list)
I consider Dennis Coles to be one of America’s great poets,
and in fact, after realizing I’ve yet to read a single good Juan Felipe Herrera
poem, have been actively lobbying Donald Trump through Twitter to appoint
Ghostface as the next U.S. Poet Laureate. (This has involved me employing an
army of 500 bot accounts – relatively cheap to acquire on the dark web – and have
them all programmed to engage, agree, and suggest not only with Trump, but
other accounts within 3 follows of separation. It’s a simple yet complicated
blueprint, often used by marketers, but politics is marketing now, so hey.) And
though the inevitable Wu-mark conversation about “best solo album” often tries
to point itself to Liquid Swords, or Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, I will forever
refuse to back down from my assertion (through endless hours of personal
testing of both tapes) that Ironman was the top solo album by Wu members.
A lot of Wu has fallen off IRL, but is still revered online.
Fuck man, I was at a Genius show a number of years back, and that motherfucker
put me to sleep, bitching about how he don’t freestyle, for like 20 minutes,
how people shouldn’t question that, all this that or the other, sounding like
the old uncle at the cookout trying to explain how stupid kids’ dances were.
Wu-markdom went from the realm of old heads (meaning the ‘90s) copping every Wu
solo tape, to that Martin Shkreli penis buying the sole copy of whatever the
fuck their artistic abomination of a Wu album was called. But I posit the
opinion Ghost has never fallen off.
Sure, he’s stumbled, perhaps due to lack of passion, or
maybe because record deals demand some new shit be released. But Ghost’s
cryptic style, which has often been copied by those who drop a lot of
references to various shits, feels so deeply-laced with personal meaning, it’s
like rap equivalent of Bezels of Wisdom when on. Ghost’s style of delivery,
where he’s the only rapper I’ve ever heard that sounds like he’s getting louder
and more frantic as the verse goes on, only adds to the piledriver.
Fishscale is one of his better solo offerings. Sure, there’s
filler and fodder on here, but when he’s hitting on all 8-cylinders, he remains
unfuckwithable. And there are a number of tracks on this album that are either
hype as fuck (a Ghost specialty), introspective as fuck (another Ghost
specialty), or balanced enough hybrid of the two. What makes hitting those
unfuckwithable moments so good is they build credit where you’re less likely to
skip the filler/fodder parts; you can ride it out, because you know it’ll be
okay, as opposed to it descending into dreaded “second half” of album where
filler/fodder attempts to patch together the shit that should’ve not been let
out the studio.
I guess what I’m saying is fvkk I love Ghostface Killah.
FOUR STARS (and I might’ve gone five but didn’t want to establish that high
point just yet in this dumb shit, and also Ghost is urbane enough there’s gonna
be pink light pollution blurring out the full stardom overhead).
T.I. – King
(released March 28, 2006; #19 on 2006 Pitchfork Albums of
the Year list)
I don’t know, there’s always been a weird disconnect in my
brain between Dungeon Family ATL music and all other trap-pish ATL music (which
is ignoring current pharmaceutical fog trends entirely). I never really felt
T.I.’s larger discography all that much. I mean I remember bumping the fuck out
of “Rubberband Man” when the local indy radio station’s hip hop show would play
it, and I might’ve napstered that fucker back in the day. But once T.I. got
established enough to have his T.I. formula (which he became wildly successful
with – far more successful than I’ll ever be likely, so understand this is not
strict haterism I’m dropping), I don’t know, it was just kinda repetitive and
boring to me.
This album is boring to me, like driving the I-70 from
partway Ohio to halfway Missouri. Occasionally, there’s a hook or chunk of a
verse that catches you enough to distract from the boredom, but mostly it’s
just kinda the same shit, and ultimately you’re not really enjoying the journey
so much as finishing it. This album is definite post-blow-up rapper’s pure “you
gotta buy this because it’s a material product I created and you liked my old
shit” later-in-career offering, not so much jinxed as it is passionless. Is
that too harsh? Maybe. I bet he put out far shittier albums later. TWO STARS
(because don’t want to give it just one).
DJ Drama & Lil Wayne – Dedication 2
(released May 2006; #37 on 2006 Pitchfork Albums of the Year
list)
Prolific mixtape “Greatest Rapper Alive” era Lil Wayne is
exactly like spending a four-day weekend getting fucked up with some peoples of
your’s from back in the day or now in the day, just you don’t get to stay
fucked up like that around the clock, which is the whole point of the trip. The
shit is fun as hell, everybody enjoys it, but at the end of it all, none of it
matters and you pretty much wasted that whole time. Wayne is pure vice and
avarice during this period, and even though he ain’t saying shit, he ain’t
saying it in about the most entertaining way and cadence possible. it’s fucking
corn syrup for your ears.
I could do without DJ Drama because I never fully
philosophically (again, my primitive boom baptism upbringing is involved here)
approved of that post-DJ Clue period where DJs went from being people who could
actually mix and ya know, do DJ shit, to being basically a used car salesman
hype track over curated (paid?) music. It’s fucking weak. But it also became
the norm, and is now why if you ask somebody who their favorite DJ is, they’ll
say something like Khaled.
This is considered by hip hop nostalgia keepers to be part
of Weezy’s upper-end of mixtape creations. I don’t mind it, but I don’t keep
anything from it either. It moves right through your system, but you are
hungover by it, to where your own brain starts to think in Weezy-isms of
repetitive wordplay patterns referencing pop culture ephemera around you in a
drug-addled Muppet voice. It’s fun as fuck, tbh; but also entirely unnecessary.
This gets at the question about all the arts (aka The Arts) –
does it have to be important work to be The Arts? Or can you just do whatever
dumb shit that pops into your brain (or heart) in the moment and that process
is as valid to The Arts as the great masters of carefully built traditional
masterpieces? I don’t know. I’m not going there. I do know it’s fun, but it
also doesn’t feel special because you feel like Lil Wayne could do this seven
more times in the next five months (which he did during this period), and that
didn’t mean he was The Best Rapper Alive so much as he had constant studio
time, was constantly scribbling shit out, and releasing it immediately; and
though others might copy that work ethic, he was better at it than them, thus
the illusion of Best Rapper Alive appeared solid as fuck.
Still though, THREE STARS because who doesn’t want to go
drink codeine cough syrup on the Outer Banks for a four-day weekend? I mean,
fuck it, right? (Also, this means it’s probably less stars than that, but you’re
at the fucking ocean, and fucked up. Stars easy as fuck to see in the right
environs.)
THE WINNER: Ghostface’s Fishscale, which advances into the
next round of my own personal prolific dorkery.
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