The Optical Files train rolls on with another CD Cullen Wade randomly picked from his basement. If you are confused about what's happening or why it's happening on this blog, click here for an intro.
Ah yes, From Start to Finish. Part 2 of the "White Boy Trilogy," or so declares the cover, preceded by Portrait of a White Boy & followed by Crackaveli. On this album you can find the song "Whiteboy"--not to be confused with the song "White Boy" from his album The Natural, also not to be confused with the album opener, "Big Ass Whiteboy," or his earlier album Car Fulla White Boys.
In case you can't tell: perhaps more than any other white rapper before or since, Haystak is obsessed with being a white rapper. He molded his entire image around it. It's probably not a coincidence that the point when I realized--how do I put this diplomatically?--how fucking weird & suspect that is, was around the same time I stopped listening to a bunch of Haystak.
Of course, most caucasian rappers do a lot of thinking about their (our) place in hiphop & responsibility to it, but when you start playing the victim--not just denying your privilege but actually claiming to be oppressed--it crosses a line. Granted, there was a large contingent of working-class white kids who felt disenfranchised & Haystak's success was tapping into that market (as we'll see, Haystak was a very shrewd self-promoter). But help those kids hold their heads high based on class solidarity or regionalism or anything other than being white, because you shouldn't rally white people around racial pride & I can't even believe I have to type those words for fuck's sake. I haven't kept up with Haystak's later stuff (he continues to release music pretty frequently) but I have to imagine by now he's either knocked that shit off or gone full Tom MacDonald.
I'd venture to guess that regular readers of this blog probably recognize Haystak (if at all) for one thing only: appearing as Mickey in the film Hustle & Flow. That was & remains Haystak's closest brush with the mainstream, although he tried really hard to cultivate beefs with Bubba Sparxxx & (you guessed it!) Eminem a few years later. You can't knock Stak's hustle because he wisely released this album the same week Hustle & Flow hit theaters, and it features what is still his biggest song, "All By Myself," which is as good a place as any to start discussing the music here.
It's a shame about all of the above marketing gimmicks, because at his peak, Stak was a fine emcee whose lyrics, delivery & heartfelt subject matter should have spoken for themselves. In "All By Myself," over a gentle acoustic guitar-based instrumental, he uses his signature melodic flow with lots of punch-ins to talk about the loneliness & hardships of his comeup with engaging honesty & surprising turns of phrase. Other songs on this album cut from the same cloth are "Bonnie and Clyde," (which features the line "from Rocawear to rocking chairs" to describe wanting to grow old with his boo) & "Be Strong," which is the album highlight for me, another acoustic guitar beat where he discusses the jail experience in intense but lighthearted detail. It's like the breezy, optimistic flipside of Beanie Sigel's "What Ya Life Like."
Every song is produced by Sonny Paradise, & the beats vary from dope (the aforementioned few as well as "Bang Bang," where spooky mandolin & sparse drums accompany a cautionary tale about the dark side of success) to embarrassing. Every beat is technically well-produced but it all has a layer of plastic inauthenticity, like a corporate Youtube type beat channel, overreliant on cheap MIDI orchestral strings & robotic sequenced drums. The album's weakest song is also its longest: "I Ain't No Pinup," with a repetitive beat (one of those loops that's supposed to sound like a sample but isn't) & Stak using a monotonous, droning flow--he's always at his best when he gets singsongy. Even in a mediocre song, though, this era of Haystak could always surprise you with an offhand profound bit of lyrics: "Making music wasn't always profitable/Major labels were a lot like hospitals/You don't always come home, sometimes you die in there/Sometimes they're so backed up they slip & leave you lying there."
Haystak clearly has a deep love for Southern hiphop, so it must have been exciting for him to get 2 legends on this album for the only 2 features: Bun B & 8Ball. Their presence, though, just reminds us that as much as he earned his stripes as a street rapper, thug shit isn't exactly his lane. He does a credible enough job on the tracks with those 2 heavyweights, but then there's songs like "U Hard," where he invents fantasy violence scenarios for each member of his crew, & it ends up unintentionally hilarious. (Not to mention the song also reuses the line about "come round through there & light it up like New Years" from a few songs back.)
This era of Haystak is a mixed bag. He sometimes sounds like Cartman from South Park (kinda looks like him too), but not as much as on the previous album. I judge a Haystak album by how many of his heartfelt introspective songs are on there, & this one falls short of Portrait & The Natural.
No comments:
Post a Comment