A Salute to Robert Christgau’s Worst and Wackiest Rap Reviews

Music critic Robert Christgau is technically a former colleague of mine, in that we both wrote for Cuepoint in 2015. Obviously I never actual contacted him, since I don’t generally make a habit of writing to creepy old white guys on the internets. For reasons I can no longer recal I stumbled upon Mr. Christgau’s extensive review archives this morning and was mildly amused by some of his thoughts on great rap albums of the past. For some reason he seems to have a particular penchant for female rap (the first three Yo Yo albums and Shazzy’s debut all got an A- grade?!) and the Fu-Schnickens, but I’ll try not top hold that obvious flaw in judgement against him.

What I will hold against him, however, are some of these unfortunate critical appraisals…

The Great Adventures of Slick Rick [Def Jam, 1988]
Like that other girlie-voiced rapper Dana Dane, Rick masks insecurities about his masculinity by dissing the opposite sex even uglier than the ugly competition. From the clarion 8″Treat Her Like a Prostitute” through this bitch and that cocaine dolly and the fake virgin “with a yay-wide gash” and the one who meant yes when she said no and ended up marching a tribe of Indians out her cunt, this man hates women. His ballad is keyed around the refrain “Don’t hurt me again” and is directed at all treacherous females, not just one. His anticrime warning closes with a convincing imitation of how bad you groan the first time you get cornholed. C+

Schoolly-D [Schoolly-D, 1986]
From the beginning, rap has been a music of aggressive, expansive possibility, claiming the world on beat and boast alone. This Philadelphia street tough claims only his turf. His powerful scratch rhythms are as oppressive and constricted as his neighborhood, and his sullen slur conveys no more hope or humor than the hostile egotism of his raps themselves. I’m not saying he isn’t realer than all the cheerful liars the biz has thrown back to the projects, or that his integrity doesn’t pack a mean punch. But he’s still an ignorant thug, and he’s cheating both his audience and himself by choosing to remain that way. B PLUS

To the East, Blackwards [4th & Broadway, 1990]
As message rap achieves the glut of gangster rap, party rap, and crossover rap, prophets and demagogues of every description join the myriad of hip hop wannabees, enabling lugs like these avowedly non-“humanist” Brooklynites to make their subcultural dent. Hallmarks: obscure Egyptological insults and flowing funk beats. Keywords: “vanglorious,” which is vainglorious, and “sissy,” a cross between the deep euphemism of “sucker” and the shameless bigotry of “faggot.” Osiris is getting sick of this shit. C

Business as Usual [Def Jam/RAL/Columbia, 1991]
Once they were winning wannabees stealing pop hooks in the basement. Now they’re big-time, as rappers measure such things, and for all the difference it makes in general humanity they might as well have gotten there selling crack. Ugly as the Geto Boys and a lot dumber, the cross-dressing tale “Jane 3” climaxes with the rape she deserves; elsewhere the rhymes run three bozacks and three criminal-mindeds to one Mandela/Farrakhan. Who cares whether they’re truly street or just following hard fashion? How many dope beats does the world need? C+

The Geto Boys [Def American, 1990]
I accept the slasher-movie defense in re the racism (and antirockism) of all attempts to stop these putative tough guys from bum-rushing the marketplace. But aesthetically the analogy is null, because slasher movies suck–exploiting and exacerbating rather than “revealing” or “catharsizing,” they’re a social pathology, period. So whether the Boys are expressing their inner natures or one-upping N.W.A. and 2 Live Crew, they’re sick motherfuckers. Women get offed before or during sex in three different songs, one of which runs a chorus of “Geto Boys, Geto Boys” in back lest the misguided distance it too far from its perps, and if the merely brutal “Gangster of Love” isn’t about their own experiences, they don’t want anybody to know it. I’m impressed by their pungent beats and vernacular. I’m glad they put Reagan in bed with Noriega. I’m sorta touched when one of them thinks to thank the first girl to lick his asshole. I admire their enunciation on “F#@* ‘Em.” But fuck ’em. B-

Bacdafucup [JMJ/RAL/Chaos/Columbia, 1993]
What the Geto Boys were to the insanity defense, Onyx are to the irony defense. Not that they’d cop to it themselves. They’re not honest enough, for one thing. And they’re also not smart enough, which doesn’t mean they’re as dumb as they pretend to be–or dumb in the way they pretend to be, either. The official line is that nobody takes them seriously, or literally, or something–that not only are they obviously not nigga-killing, whitey-robbing, pussy-stretching bad guys, they obviously aren’t pretending to be. Instead, if you’re still with me, they pretend to pretend, greatly amusing those in the know with the old nigga-in-your-nightmare routine. So for me I guess they’re something like Frederick Barthelme. Vulgar fellow that I am, I still prefer my jokes boffo. C+

Death Certificate [Priority, 1991]
Between “Dead Homiez,” which mourned murdered friends in a voice some called soft, and Boyz N the Hood, which required him to simulate thought, the St. Ides spokesperson was worried about his image. To use the only noun in the hard lexicon that suggests normal human sensitivities, he was acting like a “faggot.” So here he reclaims his perpetually threatened manhood. Early on he mitigates the usual gangsta shit–gat as penis and pit bull, female body as pestilence and plague–with such touches as an antigang track and a nurse with attitude. But eventually he breaks new ground. In addition to many fascinated rhymes on the complex subject of who fucks who in the ass and how, he nuts out on white devils who crave “a taste of chocolate” because “white bitches have no butt and no chest.” He inveighs against “Jap” and “Jew.” And he proposes a “nationwide boycott” of Korean-owned inner-city businesses that escape the torch, poking gentle fun at the Korean accent along the way. Call him Ice KKKube–a straight-up bigot simple and plain. C+

The Chronic [Interscope, 1992]
The crucial innovation of this benchmark album isn’t its conscienceless naturalization of casual violence. It’s Dre’s escape from sampling. Other rappers, as they are called, have promised to create their own musical environments, usually without revealing how much art and how much publishing fuels their creative resolve. But Dre is the first to make the fantasy pay out big-time. The world he hears in his head isn’t the up-to-date P-Funk fools say they hear–that would be too hard. Instead he lays bassline readymades under simulations of Bernie Worrell’s high keyb sustain, a basically irritating sound that in context always signified fantasy, not reality–stoned self-loss or, at a best Dre never approaches, grandiose jive. This is bell-bottoms-and-Afros music, its spiritual source the blaxploitation soundtrack, and what it promises above all is boom times for third-rate flautists–sociopathic easy-listening. Even if it’s “just pop music,” as some rationalize, it’s bad pop music. C+

Act a Fool [Capitol, 1988]
Looking for Biz Markie Compton-style, I got a gold abuser whose idea of a fool is my idea of a punk motherfucker–somebody who smokes cheeb and drinks 40s, then assaults women. D.J. Pooh (and James Brown) carry him until the anticlimactic “I Got a Cold,” which records for posterity the funkiest snurfling you’ve ever heard in your life. C+

Of the Heart, of the Soul, and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience [Gee Street, 1991]
Not only is their mind excursion less threatening than Hammer, it embraces the Beatles and Spandau Ballet with a nerdy passion that might have been designed to assuage white consciences and fears. I doubt it, though–listen true and its escapism seems not willful but willed, Prince Be’s deft, thought-out response to a world that bugs him politically, spiritually, existentially, and because he’s fat. This is rap that’s totally idiosyncratic, yet so lost in music it’s got total outreach–moving effortlessly from speech to song, the quiet storm of sweet hooks and soft beats surprises like prime Big Star or XTC, only it’s never brittle or arch. The sharpest synthesis since Prince, who we should probably start calling Prince Fuck just to keep our teen spirits straight. A

Cristgau’s Komedy Korner:

One for All [Elektra, 1990]
Constricted by rage, sanctimony, and defensive rationalization from Movement Ex to King Sun, most black-supremacist rap sags under the burden of its belief system just like any other ideological music. This Five Percenter daisy-age is warm, good-humored, intricately interactive–popping rhymes every sixth or eighth syllable, softening the male chauvinism and devil-made-me-do-it with soulful grooves and jokes fit for a couch potato. They sound so kind and confident and fun-filled you almost believe that someday they’ll throw away their crutches. But just because they were feeling irie when they made their record, don’t bet they’ll have the good sense or fortune to grab the chance. A-

Kind and fun-filled aren’t the first words that spring to mind when Lord Jamar is mentioned.

The Ruler’s Back [Def Jam/Columbia, 1991]
Cut in a hurry on bail, this widely reviled record will go nowhere, but I hear it as a work of mad avant-garde genius. I’m not kidding–nothing has ever sounded like this. Bass and drums tumbling forward atop submerged hook effects in a trademark groove that never stops, every track checks in fast. And though Rick’s bad dreams are almost as full of niggers and bitches as N.W.A’s kiddie porn, his quick, preoccupied singsong drawl makes it gratifyingly impossible to pin down the details. In short, it’s genuinely surreal, as befits the product of a sick mind. A-

I guess The Ruler grew on him, huh?

Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version [Elektra, 1995]
Yacub’s worst nightmare as comedian, moral threat, and nut case, the former Russell Jones walks that three-dimensional tightrope not with grace, and not with hope, either. With faith, maybe–even charity. Certainly with an irrepressible commitment to his own history and culture, however sublumpen the sociology of class and race judges those to be. His compulsion is to turn an absence into a presence. His clownish explosions distance him from how fucked up the violence and pleasures of his culture are and appear, respectively, and his clansmen show us how complex and full of fun their treasure is. “I’m the baddest hip hop man across the world,” he sputters, the prized fool in the court of King RZA. A-

You lost me at the part about ‘fun treasure’?

Don’t Sweat the Technique [MCA, 1992]
Rakim didn’t really frag that general in Iraq–wasn’t even there. He’s just trafficking in the metaphors nightmares are made of, exploiting the interface between horror movies and the postmodern imagination. Putting it literally: “My intellect wrecks and disconnects/Your cerebral cortex/Your cerebellum is next.” And metaphorically: “I took a kid and cut off his eyelids/Killing him slow so he could see what I did/And if he don’t understand what I said/I push in his eyeballs way to the back of his head/So he could see what he’s getting into/A part of the mind that he’s never been to.” As for the star of the show, Rakim calls Eric B.’s new groove–a jazzy minimalist funk trailing uncentered horn hooks–relaxing with pep. When he hits it right, it’s like the mouth you love doing the spot you forgot. A-

‘The spot you forgot’? Is that a Geto Boys’ reference?