…and contractually-obliged Nas features
On paper, Mass Appeal Records’ Legend Has It… series is directly aimed at my dome piece (and wallet), as it reheats eighties and nineties rap faves in the microwave of nostalgia and forces them to let Gout-Era Nas rap on at least one (or more) songs. Any seasoned rap fan would be well within their rights to expect that all of these records will have at least one great song per LP and maybe two or three ‘pretty, pretty good’ efforts. While the final chapter – the Nas and DJ Premier album that’s become rap’s answer to Guns & Roses’ Chinese Arithmetic in that it can’t possibly live-up to the weight of expectation but it will be a relief when it’s released so that everyone can stop thinking about what could have been if they’d actually made it in 2005/2006 when they started talking about the idea to the press – isn’t out until next week, let’s look at the strike rate for the first six efforts.
Slick Rick – Victory
I did a quick review of this, and was puzzled why the songs were so short but then Rick released the accompanying mini-movie a few weeks afterwards so I guess that gad something to do with it – but shouldn’t that have dropped first? Anyhoo, I liked this enough to buy it when the record hit the shelves, based on how good the b-side is and the simple fact that The Ruler is rapping over drum breaks.
‘So You’re Having My Baby’ is the sure-shot for me, while ‘We’re Not Losing’ and ‘Another Great Adventure’ (with a Q-Tip assist on the beat) and the gloriously ignorant ‘Landlord’ all hit the mark. Looking forward to the Vance Wright remix 12”s that will never happen!
Raekwon – The Emperor’s New Clothes
The Chef has really flooded the market at this point, having released some many albums and mixtapes that are indistinguishable from each other that it’s hard to get too excited about this. Tracks like ‘Pomegranate’, ‘Da Heavies’ and ‘Mac & Lobster’ with Ghostface get the job done with solid music and rapping, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that Shallah Raekwon is just clocking-on with his punchcard like a modern-day Fred Flintstone.
Obligatory Griselda guest track? Check. Unsuccessful attempts at making punk-smoove 90’s-era Hot 97 crossover singles? Two checks. Allowing Swizz Beatz to ruin a great Method Man verse because Rae may or may not owe him money for a painting he was overcharged for? Check.
Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele 2
This should have been called ‘GFK Vs. Ultimate Breaks and Beats’ since it has no connection to the first Supreme Clientele album outside of the name and the loop in ‘Rap Kingpin’, but I appreciate that Ghost is rapping over classic drums here – fried vocal cords and all.
A lot of this is reminiscent of Pretty Toney-era Ghostface, repeating the whole rapping over the whole song trick he did on ‘Holla’ for ‘Windows’ (except Tom Jones! Wales represent). Actually he raps over breakbeats on the skits on that album, so maybe this should have been The Pretty Toney Album 2 instead? The ‘Pause’ skit is funny because Ghost kinda misses the point while he scolds the listener for taking his old lyrics out of context. An enjoyable victory lap but it just makes me want to listen to older, better Ghostface songs.
Mobb Deep – Infinite
I bought this one on the strength of the song with Big Noyd on it (the awkwardly titled ‘The M. The O. The B. The B.’) and the ALC-driven ‘Score Points’ and ‘My Era’, however it’s disconcerting hearing Havoc say stuff like ‘I guess I’m cancelled’ and having a hook where he says ‘Easy Bruh’ but I guess even the Thun Language had to evolve.
Nas manages to stink-up his three (?!) appearances and I’m not sure if having The Clipse on here was part of some contractual obligation with Mass Appeal but just to be clear the Conservative Rap Coalition don’t care about those guys except for that one song that Pusha-T did that reminded me of a modern ‘I’m Not Playin’ by Diamond D’s first group.
Big L – Return of the King
The Lamont Coleman well is beyond dry at this point, since all of the usable stuff already appeared on The Big Picture and the D.I.T.C. album, so a lot of this seems to be remixes of freestyle sessions and guest spots from guys like Joey Badass and Mac Miller. Would Big L, a notorious wiseacre, have fuxed with these dudes if he had to share a studio with them? Possibly, although I like to imagine he would have snapped on both of them to the point where they both started crying and had to pretend they had hay fever or some shit.
De La Soul – Cabin In The Sky
This starts off strong, with the first three songs sounding great (DJ Premier outdoes himself with ‘Sunny Storms’, Supa Dave smashes it on ‘Good Health’ and Pete Rock serves-up a welcome Steve Miller snippet on ‘The Package’), but as soon as Killer Mike shows up it all goes downhill as they slip into the sort of wandering, sentimental navel gazing you’d expect from their pals Common or post Life Is Good Nas (funny that!)
Trugoy’s ‘Don’t Push Me’ finishes things off nicely, and almost helps to forget how dreary the most of the past twelve songs were, but this album – maybe more than anything they’ve done – sorely lacks Prince Paul’s ear for sequencing and dark, sarcastic sense of humour. Or at least Plug Four’s ability to bring those qualities out of the group.
This must have been tough for the group to make, but it feels like a missed opportunity to return to their abstract, coded lyrics that were unlike anything else in rap, before they traded it all to settle for cranky uncle status as they reminded us that ‘Stakes Is High’ but we still need to pay the gas bill so let’s not make it too complicated for the young ‘uns.
Nas and DJ Premier – Light-Years
According to the Wikipedia page, this will feature both old and new jams (word to Spoonie G) and open with…’N.Y. State of Mind Pt. III’? Whoa there Nelly (no St. Lunatics) – didn’t Alicia Keys already record this with Nas and Rakim? Or has that been stricken from official Nas lore at this point? Maybe they can really lean it and just make the whole album sequels! ‘3rd Childhood’, followed by ‘Nas Is (Still, Kinda) Like’, ‘(Losing My Short-Term) Memory Lane’ and ‘I Gave You Power (Shingles)’.
The Nas x Premier will set a new standard for the ratio of anticipation to utterly indifferent quality.
I’m sorry but the De La album has to be the worst hiphop album ever created (I’m not counting LilYungFaceTat or DFake garbage). But a group with such a pedigree, forcing real hip hop fans to listen to that, is just offensive. I mean, the skits and spoken words are longer than the rapping itself!! And I love hearing Preemo speak, but he only needs to do it once, and why is he reading from the dictionary.
Have you ever seen an old person walk down stairs, holding the railing and almost talking to themselves? That is how Posdnous is rapping. And way too much references to their own material, if I wanted to hear “I speak Divine of God theories”, I’d go back and listen to the original album. The should also leave any “3 is a magic number” references back in the Daisy era.
The first Premier beat was great, the other two were kind of uhh. But I guess it continues the trend of the Premier song being the best on every album where he’s featured.
Nas can still rap, his flow and wordplay are tight, but his subject material is horrible. Good for him that he’s a venture capitalist but I don’t listen to hip-hop for advice on alternative investments (and I never want to own real estate after listening to Slick Rick). I did like his verse on the Big L album though. As long as Nasir sticks to telling 80s and 90s Bridge stories, and keeps the investment and divorce-recovery topics to a minimum, I’m cautiously optimistic about the collab. I’m hoping Preemo held his best beats for the Godson.
Thank you for taking one for the… generation.