loosie: words: The Summer of Passion

The Summer of Passion

Sloppy and half-hearted reviews of this season's Hip-Hop offerings.

by Douglas Passion | 2004.07.07

I have to apologize. Young Passion has been slacking. The season of perspiration-drenched subway platforms, rooftop hootenannies and nipple-slips is upon us, and I’ve left my faithless readers with nothing more than a half-ass review of an MOP heavy-metal album. Depressingly, my bludgeoning of said rip-rock project as a tiresome fusion of screams and cheeseball power chords earned me the ire of several Brooklynites and at least one Southeast Asian woman. I can’t even walk through Malaysia a-gain. Charge it to the game -- as luck would have it, I’m here to make amends. Because I willfully disregard all release dates (which gums up the whole intricate machinery of timely promo mailouts), I’m going to bless the universe with a collection of short, ill-informed and generally lazy comments on albums that came out or will come out during the summer. Full disclosure: my “reviews” of some of these albums are based on leapfrogging through the tracks for ten seconds a pop.

Jadakiss – Kiss of Death
J-to-the-Muah, following the lead of one Nasir Jones, has mastered the duplicitous craft of dropping dope mixtapes and singles before uncorking a bland album. Ever optimistic that talented rappers will, for once, do exactly what we want, we’re but crippled mice tangled in the twigs of the Universal Music Group osprey nest. On The Champ is Here, Jada spits his monotone multis over vintage beats from O.C., Mobb Deep and Junior M.A.F.I.A (Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes) -- just enough to give us a fleeting but refreshing gust of realhiphopishness. Appetites whet, we eagerly glommed up the album to receive a mouthful of rinky-dink keyboards, stale Pharell Mayfield-impressions and half-hearted sentimentality. Full disclosure: we listened to this album once while drunk, didn’t really enjoy it, and went back to rocking The Champ is Here on a daily basis. Back to Nas for a second – if we hadn’t heard the pedestrian “You Know My Style”, the Iron Butterfly-pillaged “Thief’s Theme” would have had us all geared up for however many discs Esco’s next jamboree includes. As it is, we’re adopting a download-and-see mentality.

Lloyd Banks – The Hunger for More
What is 50’s bad lieutenant so famished for? More well-constructed punchlines about guns, weed and head? More beats that niftily defy regional classification? More muffled rapping-from-under-a-pillow vocal effects? About half of the album bangs – the “Warrior” remix is fantastic. But too many slurred sing-song hooks sap the energy out of Hunger – the original “Warrior” isn’t fantastic. More importantly, I’ve apparently become a sensitive Passion; I found myself irked by the vulgarity of the sex/love romp “Karma”. No, I didn’t fully pay attention to what the man with the tattooed hands was talking about, but, if you’re going to make a song obviously geared towards the bitches, lines about five dudes and “four dicks getting sucked” just comes off as unnecessarily crude. Full Discloser: this album was listened to twice, more or less.

Jean Grae – This Week
For years, Ms. Grae has been the wet dream of every backpacker. And for good reason; she’s attractive, cradles an ample bosom and gyrates majestically between such lovable underground traits as righteous bitterness and mournful resignation. A Def Jux employee once told me, with eyes as wide as Pun’s medallion, “Jean Grae was in the office today!” To work side-by-side with the sensitive scruffiness that is Aesop Rock and still be awestruck by Jean…well, she has to possess that special zing. Unlike Attack of the Attacking Things or The Bootleg of the Bootleg EP, This Week showcases something of a kinder, gentler Jean. Maybe it’s the lovefest of the Okayplayer Tour. Jean doesn’t rap over bullshit tracks, of course, but this time around the production is less infested with dark strings and more, for lack of a better term, “commercial”. It’s a little more R&Bish, a little more dance-friendly. She even does some light crooning (the sung intro for the press CD was stellar). But the Grae Lady definitely does her conversational one-two thing – “I’m just too cute to be considered as filthy” she says, almost ruefully, on the truly dope final track. This Week is a winner. Full Disclosure: I’m listening to this right now.

Terror Squad – True Story
With only four remaining rappers (and singer Tony Sunshine), Terror Squad’s second posse album escapes the “who’s that” confusion that plagued the first. Fat Jiddo and Remy Ma monopolize the mic, but, when given the opportunity, underbosses Prospect and Armageddon show themselves both pretty nasty in their own right. The late Pun was such a dominant emcee that his presence often rendered the rest of the unit negative space – now, with all the rappers roughly about the same skill level, there’s a little more cohesion. Mostly composed of street bangers, True Story thankfully veers away from any of those lame Ashanti or Ginuine collaborations that befouled Fat Joe’s commercial solo efforts. And, as always, you get a jab at Jigga: "Rappers claimin' they retirin'...but they lyin'". Go Fat Gangsta! It's a solid record, packed with ad lids about "real Hip-Hop". Full Disclosure: Heard once.

DJ Suss One – Piece of Mind (Best of Eminem mixtape)
Running the gamut from “Bad Meets Evil” to “Welcome to D-Block”, this collection offers up snippits from 45+ Eminem songs. DJ Suss One proves he isn’t as hardworking as, say, DJ Vlad – the transitions between songs are usually a simple duh-duh scratch or an outright slam. Also mystifying is the order – it’s semi-chronological but not completely. You’ve heard most of the tracks, but it’s nice to have the Em/Redman and Em/Missy collaborations together instead of burning them off yourself. Truth be told, I’d rather listen to this mixtape than any of Shady’s albums. Piece of Mind is a reminder, as if you actually needed one, that for all of his commerical success, that Eminem motherfucker can slay a verse with the best of them. Full Discloser: I’ve been listening to this shit all weekend.

Brand Nubian -- Fire in the Hole
Long past their prime, Brand Nubian’s music has always remained listenable. Even if no one was kicking doors off hinges to get a “Don’t Let it Go to Your Head” stomach tattoo, it was a cool little ditty. But that was way back in '98 -- on their newest effort, the New Rochelle trio is betrayed by some of the most unprofessional production to ever grace an established artists’ album. Maybe it’s all a terrible mistake and their PR people sent us an unmastered demo or something (one song on the promo seems to have omitted the lead vocals but preserved the backup vocals). Even the beats that aren’t shockingly wack wear out their welcome after a few minutes of redundant two-bar looping. It’s baffling that the group couldn’t get a handful of respectable tracks – you’d figure they knew enough good producers who would hit them off out of love. I mean really, these are the guys who threatened to tie Jews up and feed them swine – what’s more Hip-Hop than that? Plus Lord Jamar was sounding kinda hungry for an HBO actor who displayed his genitals on “Oz”. This album should be thrown in a fire or a hole, preferably both. Full Disclosure: this album was listened to less than once.