I've been wondering when this one would pop up & how I would handle it. For those of you who don't know, C-Rayz Walz is currently incarcerated awaiting trial for felony rape, kidnapping, stalking, & a whole bunch of other stuff I'd rather not get into. Dude hasn't had his day in court yet & news about the case has been extremely sparse so I don't want to act like I know anything, but that indictment on 32 counts of horrid crimes with so much specificity definitely made it hard to enjoy this album on its own terms. Especially since it's connected to a fond memory: in early fall 2003, a little Def Jux tour--Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif, C-Rayz Walz--stopped at my college & played a free outdoor show to about 50 people. I bought Ravipops from Walz & said, "much love for the free show," & that's how I came to have this CD insert signed with the message "To Cullen - Thanks for the free love, C-Rayz Walz."
There's a tension between the different modes of Walz: the mystical spiritual piece is out front--kind of a mishmash of NGE, Hinduism, Rastafari & Kabbalah--but for the most part he is a streetsmart punchline rapper. The album opens with 3 straight up ego-trip tracks, & there's many more to follow. Of these, "Buck 80" is my favorite, but "Battle Me," with its charming childlike Jo Chris beat complete with skittering triggered bass, is another highlight among the bar-heavy songs. Then there's a minority of message-oriented tracks: the grown man shit of "Protect My Family," the mournful ghetto portrait "We Live," the ecological angst of "Seal Killa," the Native American battle cry "Dead Buffalos," & "86," the obligatory 2000s underground rap album "hiphop isn't what it used to be" track. The latter is the best beat on the album, a nostalgic sounding track with sparse piano & drums, driven by a processed vocal sample. Overall the beats tend to be noisy, thickly layered NY neo-boom-bap, so it's nice to have a few chiller respites like "86" & "Protect My Family."
Mostly, though, listening to this album made me think about punchline inflation. Walz's bars are full of witty wordplay by 2003 standards, but every few lines he says something that would be considered a struggle bar today, e.g. "I'm nice around the mic like the Wizard players." That got oohs & ahhs back in the early 2000s but would get you laughed out of the cypher today. Today you need to have a few extra layers of wordplay on top of a simple punchline like that (granted, that one is couched in a larger NBA scheme, but still). It makes me wonder if the most mindblowing bars of today will look simplistic in 20 years, & what punchlines will sound like then. Is there an upper limit to lyrical complexity?
Anyway, Bronx native C-Rayz Walz is a very particular but familiar kind of NY street rapper: 1 part mystic, 2 parts dirtbag, 5 parts mic wrecker. If Walz did those heinous things he's locked up for, there are plenty of other similar emcees you can get this kind of bars from. If he's innocent (& honestly it feels like a big if to me), I guess I'll get around to bumping this CD again eventually. It probably won't be another 15 years, but I can't promise anything.
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