Juvenile’s old-head-on-young-shoulders, worldly and slight-weary persona is much easier to warm to than Jay-Z’s richer-than-thou condescension. Carter” turns the rapper’s real name into the jeering chorus: “S dot carter/you must try harder/competition is NADA!” In “Do It Again” he’s so iced-out with diamond-encrusted jewelry, his “wrists’s frostbit minus two degrees”, while “S. Jay-Z’s OG shtick pukes up some of his wittiest wordplay. Word-wise the creativity resides in the endless, black-humorous twists on murder/money/misogyny. Lyrically, no two ways about it, street rap is pure evil: spiritually bankrupt, in thrall to false consciousness (delusions like “crime pays” and “some gangstas stay on top for ever”) and basically no advance on the black nihilism and commodity-fetishism of Schooly D circa 1986’s “PSK” and “Gucci Time”. It’s almost exhilirating enough to make you forget socially irresponsible couplets like "if a nigga step on your goddamn shoes/fuck him up/WILD OUT!!!"-virtually incitement to over-act to any perceived insult or threat.
The Ruff Ryders camp has its moments of exuberance, like the rowdy call-and-response clamor and bruising bass-bounce of The Lox's "Wild Out". This vision of thug life as agony, repetition, and endurance is communicated as much through DMX's hoarse rasping timbre (pure Ozzy/Rollins) and his flow (alternating between pay-close-attention-this-is-hard-earned-knowledge-I'm-sharing slow to rapid-fire blurts like he's got too much pain to cram into the rhyme-scheme's stanzas.) "The Professional" is a bleak glimpse into the mind of a hired assassin ("Shit ain't go too well/THAT'S MY LIFE/Know I'm going to hell/THAT'S MY LIFE") while the betrayal-and-retribution themed "Here We Go Again" starts with the insuperably fatigued murmur "Same old shit, dog/Just a different day". Produced by Ruff Ryders chief soundboy Swizz Beatz, "One More Road To Cross" has the accursed, burdened heft of Blacks Sabbath and Flag-a perfect fit for DMX's stoic description of a carefully planned liquor store heist that goes bloodily wrong. But the music ( tres Swans, actually) makes it sound like a treadmill grind.Īs superthugs go, DMX is the most interesting, because he doesn't glamorize the gangsta lifestyle. Lyrically, “Do It Again” revels in the playa's nightly cycle of clubbing, drinking, pulling, and taking the ho home: "6-AM I be digging her out/6-15 I be kicking her out". But where Gira’s vision was a Beckett-style dehumanized hell of domination/submission, Jay-Z and Juvenile make like they actually enjoy living like this. Like the Swans circa Greed, the lyrics-an interminable catalogue of boasts, threats and flaunted wealth-offer an X-Ray view of capitalism’s primary drives of will-to-power, alpha-male display and ravenous appetite. Street rap like Jay-Z’s is unpretty in another sense. Not for nothing does the track start with the warning: “it’s about to get real ugly in here”. Take Jay-Z's single "Do It Again": Rockwilder's production as harsh and mechanistic as a track by Jeff Mills, just a melody-free spasm of sub-bass, a nagging blurt of computer-in-distress bleeps, and an asymmetrical loop of punishing kicks and snares. These new platinum-selling monsters by Ruff Ryders’ DMX, Cash Money’s Juvenile, and Jay-Z (don of his own dynasty, Roc-A-Fella) completely shred the tired critical line: major label = formula and indie (aka “undieground”) = inventive. Similarly, the directness of Tupac has proved far more influential than any Wu-Tang clansman’s virtuoso encryption skillz. Yo, reality check: a bitter pill to swallow, but the truth is that Nineties rap was shaped not by 3 Feet High or Fear of A Black Planet (twin totems of the critic-cherished “lost golden age of 1988-91), but by NWA’s Efil4zaggin and Notorious BIG’s Ready To Die. Predictably, last year’s critics polls endorsed such “lost causes” as the Roots and Prince Paul/Handsome Boy Modelling School, and overlooked huge-selling records by DMX and Eve, Lil Wayne and Hot Boys, despite the fact that the two labels/clans to which these artists are affiliated (Ruff Ryders and Cash Money) are at the forefront of a creative upsurge in hardcore rap. It’s particularly problematic with rap, a megabuck entertainment industry these days, but still motored by the cruel fluctuations of popular desire, aka “the streets”. At a certain point, though, doggedly insisting “this should be pop, not that chart crap” gets counterproductive, blinding you to vital things going on in the world of the stuff that sells. Life and Times of S.CarterĬritics love lost causes.
0 kommentar(er)
