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Album Review: Tragedy's Still Reportin'

The Intelligent Hoodlum keeps doing the same shit, but well.

by Douglas Passion | 2003.09.24

If Tragedy Khadafi puts out an album, I’ll listen to it. He could be sixty-years old and scooting around Queensbridge in a wheelchair and I’ll still spend an hour of my valuable time nodding through the latest compilation of falafel references, paranoid ramblings and vocal sample-enriched beats.

The voyage from Intelligent Hoodlum to Conspiracy Theorist Thug has been potholed by personas such as the Arab Nazi and the Bing Monster, but Tragedy has nonetheless earned a reputation as someone who consistently puts out solid product. His only brush with true greatness took place on the Capone ‘N’ Noriega debut The War Report, but you’re not going to buy a Tragedy album and feel as if you were raped by Clive Davis in return for a Busta Rhymes Genesis drink coaster/platinum Frisbee. I’m still confused as to what the difference was between Against All Odds and Thug Matrix (the possessor of one of the most mind-numbingly stupid album titles in recent memory -- until it was trumped by Tragedy’s mixtape follow-up, Thug Matrix II), but I figure they were really just the same record that got bootlegged at two different times.

In the seven years since the release of the fantastic The War Report, Tragedy has had enough wisdom to wrap his arms around an effective formula and cling to it like a bobbing life preserver. Middle Eastern geography, 5% rhetoric, gun talk, tales of hood hardship and rugged production are mixed with a few cheesily-interpolated R&B hooks. Still Reportin’ is no different. Actually, it’s intentionally the same -- hence the “Still” in the title. Ever uncreative with the album monikers, Tragedy leaps aboard the already overcrowded caravan of titles referencing successful older records – Stillmatic, Bacdafucup Part II, Spiritual Minded and fucking etc. It doesn’t matter; most of his appeal is rooted in his consistency, not the expectation of artistic growth.

There isn’t much to say about Still Reportin’ other than it sounds like what you probably think it sounds like. There are some quality cameos, none of which seem out of place like that odd coupling of Cam’ron and RZA on Tragedy’s last joint. Mobb Deep’s Havoc, fresh off of a strong appearance on that Big Noyd album, has two dope verses. A skeptic might chalk Hav’s nasty triumvirate off to coincidence, but I’m getting the sneaking suspicious that the long-overlooked midget has been putting in a little extra work with the pen and pad. Some dude with the hilarious name of Christ Casto contributes a hook and a pretty nice verse – he sounds sort of like a thugged-out Obie Trice with better punchlines.

The best line on the album is “C. Delores Tucker gave me head up in the fed prison.” Even if this is Tragedy’s revenge fantasy for the old civil rights advocate’s criticisms of Tupac in the mid-Nineties, the desire to receive oral sex from that crusty pro-censorship windbag is bizarre (even without the whole caged-heat Leavenworth action). Shit, she was born in freaking 1923 or something. On another track, Tragedy compares himself to Amadou Diallo and H. Rap Brown because the police have messed with him for “carrying his gat”. It’s not clear whether the recent incident where Tragedy and Noriega were pulled over in Midtown Manhattan on suspicious of having a concealed weapon is irony or life imitating art.

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