Film, media and related arts - subjective contemplation and commentary with consideration of the intrinsic duality, interminable relevance and evolution of each.
Exhibition of original and contributed film, art, music and writings.
With occasional reflection on the perpetual absurdity/intrigue of life and society in general.
With a new generation making noise in the NY scene (BDP, Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim) the old-schoolers were under pressure to compete. Kool Moe Dee, a legendary member of rap's pioneering Treacherous Three, & his style were already starting to seem like old hat. After his modestly successful 1986 self-titled album (that mainly contained retrofitted Treacherous Three material), Moe Dee was determined to prove that he could hang with the new jacks. Part of this strategy involved the battle-tested Moe Dee (just ask Busy Bee) picking a fight with one of the newer jacks, a cocky young cat named LL Cool J. He addresses this beef on at least 2 songs here, & the backed-into-a-corner energy pervades the entire record. The result is a firecracker of an album, with some of the best & most unique rhyme writing of his career, that had the misfortune of appearing in a stacked year.
Moe Dee pokes fun at his own reputation as an old head on "Way Way Back," where he uses a reverb effect on his voice & crowd samples to try to replicate the feeling of rapping in a packed club. It's funny that the "way way back" he's referring to is, like, 5 years ago? but hiphop as an art form advanced at breakneck speed in those early days. To a modern listener, the style he showcases on this track might not sound much different from his rhyming on the rest of the album. But what he's doing here is the original meaning of "freestyle": an extended rhyme on no particular topic, intended to showcase skill & hype up a crowd. Moe Dee's lyrics on the rest of the album are much more focused, & he uses more of his trademark multisyllables, which are mostly absent from "Way Way Back."
Let's talk about those multisyllables. Moe Dee frequently uses a technique where he carries a 2 (or more) syllable rhyme pair across a 2-word phrase, placed at the end of a bar while the sentence continues into the next bar. From the title track (a sub diss to LL): "Schemin' like a demon, you're screamin' & dreamin'/I'm from the old school, I used to see men/Die for less[...]" This creates a natural moment of suspense while you wait for the emcee to finish whatever he's saying. (In the above example, it has the added humor of initially sounding like "I'm from the old school, I'm used to semen.") Kool Moe Dee does this all the time. On "Rock You," another song taking aim at LL, he opens the song with "Boy you're going crazy, really getting lazy/Rhymes as weak as water, even shorter than the days we/Saw you on the pop charts[...]" (Note the internal rhyme he packs into this example as well.) Sometimes he even breaks a single word across the bar line for the sake of the rhyme: "I am authentic, like the Titanic/But I'm unsinkable, believe it & then ac-/cept it, it's reality[...]" I don't know if I've explained this well, & I don't know if there's a name for it. I've always called it the Kool Moe Dee technique.
A lot of rap albums from this era don't list specific producer credits, but I know that the great Teddy Riley, along with Chuck New & Kool Moe Dee himself had their hands in this. I don't know about each producer's specific contributions, but the popcorn synth bass & wordless "aah" vocals of "Wild Wild West" have Teddy Riley written all over them, as does the interpretation/interpolation of Aretha's horn stabs on "No Respect." Then there's the Paul Simon-sampling "50 Ways," with its deep, slow drumbeat with snare rolls & pitched toms that builds over the course of the track, which is wholly unlike most of the beats people were rhyming on in 1987. The track wasn't meant for dancing, & Moe Dee says as much. He's mostly not trying to make you move (although on an album packed with this many James Brown samples, it's hard not to)--the bars are the main attraction here.
Too bad we get another one of those slut-shaming anthems in the song "I'm a Player," where he criticizes a woman for having lots of sexual partners while bragging about doing the same thing himself. This one is notable for how close he comes to articulating the double standard while still somehow managing to miss the point: "If a guy has 100 girls, he's a hero/A girl with 100 guys is a zero/Don't blame me cuz society made the rule[...]" But that's the only stain on this otherwise lyrically flawless album. Moe Dee was always a rapper's rapper, & the clarity & power of his vocal delivery, the assuredness of his messages & the writerly precision are all evidence of a carefully honed craftsman experienced both onstage & in a vocal booth. "Rock You" particularly is a master class of intricate rhymes, close to the state of the art in 1987.
Mind you, I said "close to," because this album had the misfortune of dropping 8 months after Criminal Minded & 4 months after Paid in Full. Those 2 records completely changed the game in NYC, & even though How Ya Like Me Now was more commercially successful than either, the gauntlet was thrown down. People weren't looking to the past anymore. Moe Dee rode the LL Cool J beef to solid, but diminishing success for the next few years, but the writing was on the wall. How Ya Like Me Now is the peak of his solo career, & a document of a moment that passed almost before it even began.
I have a lot of history with this CD. When I met KRS at a lecture/book signing in 2004 (back when I cared about autographs), this was the album I brought for him to sign. After scrawling his graffiti tag with a flourish over his photo on the inside flap, Kris put highlighting brackets around the portion of the liner notes that read: "A special thanks to George Bush for fuckin' up the nation and continuing the conspiracy to destroy the African. Thanks!" We shared a rueful smirk at the fact that, almost a decade & a half later, another George Bush was continuing that work in the nation's highest office.
A glance at the liner notes is useful here for more than just my nostalgia or finding historical parallels. Kris was mad this time around. You can tell in the way he repeatedly points out the hypocrisy he sees around him--conscious rap was having a moment around 1990 (largely thanks to Public Enemy's runaway success) & like any other trend, this brought a lot of insincere bandwagon jumpers. Kris doesn't mince words in decrying the "frauds of revolution" who "call themselves the teachers and in another breath they're gangster pop star pimps acting the way the government wants black people to act." So much of the indignation that fuels KRS-One's music has come from watching a culture he deeply loves--a culture he helped give birth to--be repeatedly coopted, watered-down, disrespected, misrepresented & exploited for literal decades. It's easy for me to say, "hey, mainstream gonna mainstream," but I'm not as deeply invested in the culture as KRS-One. (Getting there, but not quite.) Kris was beginning his speaking engagements around this time & the album features several interludes taken from them. The interludes (one of which is by Kwame Ture, not KRS) mostly discuss white America's perceptions of hiphop & of Black people in general. "Exhibit E," in which Kris critiques the Emancipation Proclamation, was always my favorite. He points out that Lincoln didn't realize that "the African is not a slave [...] What Lincoln is ultimately saying is, 'Now you're born a slave, you'll always be a slave, & all I will ever see you as is a slave--& I'll free you.'" That blew my mind the first time I heard it at age 17 or so, having been brought up to think of Lincoln as one of the good ones.
Kris fully came into his own as the Teacha on this album, but I've always noticed a disconnect between songs where he's getting busy & showcasing rhyme skill ("Ya Know the Rules," "The Kenny Parker Show," "Original Lyrics" or the title track) & songs that exist merely to convey a message. "Beef" is a good example of the latter. It was the 1st time I'd ever heard a rapper speak on vegetarianism (beyond the no pork rule observed by Islam & NGE), & I always loved it as a topical song. But I noticed that, as opposed to his economy of well-chosen words when he's just rappity-rapping, in his message songs KRS often inserts words & phrases at the ends of lines that are only there to make it rhyme. "Fear & stress can become a part of you/In your cells & blood, this is true." Or "When the cow is killed, believe it/You preserve those cells, you freeze it." "This is true" & "believe it" are verbal fluff--it's possible to make your point & keep the rhyme going without inserting superfluous phrases. Kris figured that out, though, since this is the last album where he does it.
The production here is handled almost entirely by Kris himself. The only track he doesn't have a producer credit on is the classic "Love's Gonna Get'cha (Material Love)," which Pal Joey laces with a '60s-style bass groove, a drum-machine cowbell, & a Jocelyn Brown sample. The song is iconic with good reason: it's a chilling feat of storytelling as Kris explains the path that many ghetto youth take from innocents to criminals, complete with well-articulated details of poverty ("I've got 3 pairs of pants & with my brother I share [...] I've got beans, rice, & bread on my shelf"). It's always struck me that the story does a better job of illustrating how the deck is stacked against poor urban Black people in a way that makes desperate antisocial measures seem like the only way out (see the despondent refrain "tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do?), rather than the stated moral about not falling in love with material items.
Another storytelling joint I always loved is "100 Guns," with its synth bass & reggae piano & horn samples that create a deceptively cheerful beat for a story about gun smuggling that makes it clear the real villains are the corrupt cops. We've also got the rhythmically complex "Breath Control II," built on samples of a blues shuffle in 6/8 retrofitted to fit a 4/4 time signature.
One of the most compelling yet problematic songs here is album centerpiece "Ya Strugglin'." Over a bouncy D-Nice co-produced beat driven by jazzy piano stabs & a swanky sax chop, KRS criticizes Black people who change their appearance to try to look less Black. None of this is really any of my business--but I do know that the history of Black women's relationship with their hair is long, fraught & complex enough that a glib "you should just wear it natural" is reductive--but Kris spends most of the 1st verse promoting the myth that white supremacy seeks to "feminize" Black men. "Are there any straight singers in R&B?" he asks. This is implicitly homophobic (& GNC-erasing as well) while not really relevant to the topic at hand. Verse 2 & Kwame Ture's spoken interjections are great though.
Because of the iconic "Love's Gonna Get'cha," I can't really argue that this is the "lost" BDP classic that more people should hear. (We'll get to that one soon enough.) But I do think people who stop after Ghetto Music are doing themselves a major disservice. He hadn't quite mastered the integration of his teaching with his mic-murdering instincts yet, but there are so many gems to be unearthed here--except the unfocused dancehall workout "7 Deejays" that clocks in at over 9 minutes, every song is a heavy hitter. Damn, I had really good taste as a teenager!
Wanting very badly to break The Clash in America, & convinced that their self-titled debut album's unrefined production wouldn't do it, CBS records hired Blue Öyster Cult hitmaker Sandy Pearlman to give some commercial sheen to the production of their sophomore album Give 'Em Enough Rope--the 1st Clash record to be released in the US. Pearlman wastes no time signaling his intentions: the album opens with the cannon-shot of a solo snare drum hit before the band crashes into "Safe European Home," & the tom rolls that carry it into its coda make the song a fine showcase for Pearlman's huge, reverbed drum production.
Of course, there's another reason to show off the drums in the album's opening moments: the band finally had a proper drummer! Terry Chimes was technically a session player on the debut & was never intended to be a band member (at least not until they brought him back in 1982), as evidenced by his cheeky credit in the liner notes as "Tory Crimes." New drummer Topper Headon was the best pure musician who ever played in The Clash. His unerring sense of rhythm & stellar technique are obvious in the unpredictable upshots of "Drug Stabbing Time" & the subtle swing he adds to the shuffle of "Julie's Been Working For the Drug Squad."
People like to dismiss this album because of the polished production, saying that Pearlman had no idea how to produce a punk record. That may be true--& there's certainly nothing wrong with the debut album's thin, dry sound--but Pearlman did have a knack for teasing out the arena rock elements that always existed in The Clash's sound. Witness the pinwheel-worthy downstrokes in "Tommy Gun" or Mick Jones's Mott the Hoople-flavored ballad "Stay Free." In an era of The Clash broadening their songwriting, I think Pearlman was the perfect producer to guide them through explorations of different sides to their sound.
Sadly, while I am a big fan of the music on this album, in all its excited energy, this is the Clash record with the least lyrical appeal for me. My favorite Clash modes are champions of global leftism, penning odes of solidarity to resistance guerrillas worldwide; & sardonic chroniclers of the grinding drudgery & inequity of working-class life in Britain. Give 'Em Enough Rope is a dog's dinner of lyrical topics: "Tommy Gun," "English Civil War" & "Guns on the Roof" are typical (to the point of being samey) Clash material about militarism & complacency. The peppy "Julie's Been Working For the Drug Squad" is a sarcastic song about the absurdity of locking people up for decades for the crime of manufacturing LSD, although "Drug Stabbing Time" comes off as strangely sanctimonious for a band whose members (including lyricist Joe Strummer) were all using drugs at the time. We also get songs like "Last Gang in Town," a West Side Story-esque colorful romanticization of gang violence. "Safe European Home" is an interesting lyrical exercise, partly satirizing tourists who get robbed overseas, partly acknowledging that their own compassionate politics don't insulate them from the desperate actions of poor Jamaicans ("I went to the place where every white face is an invitation to robbery"). "All the Young Punks," as a rumination on the rock star profession & how it isn't all it's cracked up to be, is mostly successful, but I have never understood the bizarre chorus phrase "All you young cunts, live it now, there ain't much to die for." (??) Meanwhile "Stay Free," Mick Jones's sole lead vocal turn about a school friend of his who took a different path in life, is the kind of introspective ballad that Joe Strummer always tried to keep Mick from doing, but I think the band should have recorded more of.
It's easy to overlook Give 'Em Enough Rope, as it lacks both the charging, snotty energy of The Clash & the freewheeling genre-bending of London Calling. What is does have is a whole bunch of big muscular rock riffs & a massive sound that commands your full attention. If the lyrics were up to par, it would be the middle chapter in an untouchable trilogy of perfect classics. As it stands, it's still the Clash album I put on when I want just a concentrated blast of rock for rock's sake.
I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure this was the 1st KRS-One CD I bought, & it must have been right around the time it was released. It had been 4 years since I Got Next, the longest break he's ever taken between albums before or since. As he explains in the song "Hiphop Knowledge," Kris put his recording career on pause in the late '90s to become a record executive, working as vice-president of A&R for Reprise, a WarnerMedia label. After a few years the cognitive dissonance got too much for him, feeling like a sellout while being so publicly critical of the mainstream music industry, so he quit that job & returned to making records, beginning with The Sneak Attack. You don't need to know all this history to hear that Kris sounds reinvigorated on this album, demolishing every beat & taking out all frauds. Simply put, even more than usual, the Teacha is rapping his ass off on this record!
This album title does not use the word "attack" frivolously. This is possibly the most aggressive album KRS ever made. A lot of it has to do with his delivery: even on ostensibly softer moments like the female-sung hooks of the title track or "The Lessin," the Blastmasta is still blasting with exuberant authority. The production is almost uniformly loud, brickwalled & in your face. More than half the beats are produced by either Kris or his brother Kenny, & their production styles are pretty much indistinguishable: hard drums & stabbing synth chops. Rather than sounding samey, though, aggressive uptempo beats like "Attendance," "Why," "I Will Make It" & "Get Your Self Up" contribute to the album's overall breathless, propulsive energy. When a beatmaker not named Parker enters the arena, it provides a little bit of relief--they still knock just as hard, but there's a bit more melody & subtlety to be found in Domingo's "What Kinda World" with its off-kilter drumbeat & Latin-flavored horns; his mournful strings loops on "Hiphop Knowledge"; the descending harp lines of Fredwreck's "Shutupayouface"; or the tremolo-picked acoustic guitars & eerie choirs of Mad Lion's "The Raptizm."
KRS didn't always walk that fine line between righteous rage & excessive preachiness with success, especially in his later work, but he's nothing if not surefooted here. He hits on a variety of subject matter, but it's usually straight out of the KRS playbook: the sorry state of mainstream rap, his Black liberationist take on politics, & the spirituality of hiphop. I think the most interesting piece is the aforementioned "Hiphop Knowledge" (also the album's midpoint), where he uses a fast, insistent flow, just shy of speed rap. to recount the story of his entire career up to that point, broken down year by year, & how he came full-circle in his thinking. The way he describes the decision to quit his record label job by echoing the sentiment from Afrika Bambaataa that set him on the road to conscious rap in the first place is beautiful & resonant. By the time we get to the closer "The Raptizm," where Kris innovates a wholly unique flow, 2 things are clear: the old master was still bringing new styles into the millennium, & he was thinking deeply about spirituality (it came as no surprise when his next album was Spiritual Minded, though the explicitly Christian lens was kind of a curveball).
I think of this record as the start of "new school" KRS--it follows a natural break after his experience as an executive & after he stopped even trying to court the charts. It's weird (i.e. makes me feel old) to contemplate that The Sneak Attack is now 7 years older than Criminal Minded was when it came out. After a certain point, it becomes a little silly to categorize eras of an artist's career, because once enough time passes the stylistic subtleties will be irrelevant. Just like nobody but the most fastidious classical music nerds makes a big deal about the 16 years between Beethoven's 5th & 9th symphonies, in 200 years when KRS-One's oeuvre is studied (which I hope it is), it will be taken as whole. I have a feeling when removed from the context of "it's not classic KRS," the pounding, pugnacious, quotable-filled The Sneak Attack will take its rightful place among his best work.
I know this album has its fans, but there's a lot more people who forget it even exists. Face has always had a tendency to vacillate between challenging projects & crowd-pleasing ones--witness the jump from the meandering 70-minute The World Is Yoursto the laser-focused The Diary. Arriving in between the bloated feature bonanza of My Homies & the streamlined, commercialized The Fix, the 56-minute The Last of a Dying Breed feels like a transitional album in multiple ways. The record, released as Face turned 30, was his most reflective work until that point, & began the transition from delinquent street kid to his serious OG persona that I discussed in my writeup on Made. Unfortunately, this is one of the albums that were hamstrung by Rap-A-Lot & J. Prince's infamous cost-cutting: for an album so mature in its subject matter, its presentation just feels cheap.
The trouble begins with the mix. In almost every song, the beat is turned up & the vocals are buried to the point where you have to strain to discern them. Nothing wrong with Face's beatmaking (he is the 1st credited producer on every track here except 1 Erick Sermon beat), but his bars are always the main attraction, & submerging the vocals does everybody a disservice. "Look Me In My Eyes" is a good example: between its dramatic orchestrals & pizzicato strings & its surgical dissection of everything stacked against a successful Black man from the hood, it's probably the most interesting song here both musically & lyrically. But when those awesome timpani punctuate the end of every 8-bar phrase, they overpower Face's punchlines. There's also a problem with the song transitions. Most of the tracks are supposed to blend into each other in a seamless mix, but somebody must have messed up the master & left a half-second gap between them. It's distracting & jarring & takes you out of the atmosphere, conveying a feel of unprofessionalism ill-suiting a legendary grown man emcee more than a decade deep in his bag.
Thankfully, these problems don't extend to the content, which remains at a high level throughout. Occasionally Face's albums can be marred by less than stellar collaborators, but every feature here is entertaining, including the not-always-impressive Jayo Felony, who joins Face & Tha Dogg Pound over the strident, sinister synths & strange sound effects of the Mike Dean coproduction "O.G. To Me." You wouldn't think Redman's Jersey wiseass & Face's Texas heavyweight styles would mesh, but they support each other well on the propulsive "And Yo." If anything, Jay-Z has the least impressive feature on here (that's something that doesn't happen too often) with the desultory caper story "Get Out."
It's no secret that I love Face when he gets reflective, & songs like the title track (basically a detailed, pessimistic description of childbirth), the emotionally naked reincarnation-contemplating "In My Time," & the aforementioned "Look Me In My Eyes" make up the beating heart of this sonogram image. I especially appreciate these lines on the latter song:
You know I ain't no dopeboy, ain't never been a mule
I admit I use to sell rocks, but that was back in school
Now I just do music, and smoke a little weed
But not enough to run a dope house, so why you fuck with me?
In these lines, Face admits that his drug lord persona was just a gimmick for his early records, & implicitly reflects on rappers not being given the same benefit of the doubt for poetic license as other kinds of writers.
This album comes so close. The content is all there; if it weren't for the weird mix & occasionally low-budget sounding production, it would be mentioned in the same breath as The Fix or The Diary. As it stands, it will remain a deep cut: plenty of riches on offer for the die-hards willing to do a little digging.
On the summer solstice of 2005, I joined an upstart DVD-by-mail rental service called Netflix. The first DVD I rented was Last House on Dead End Street, followed by Blood Feast & Nightbreed.
Today, over 17 years later, after much hemming & hawing, I finally canceled my membership.
My relationship with Netflix has been longer than any romantic relationship I've been in, any job I've had, any place I've lived. When I returned from overseas in 2010, I found that I finally had fast enough internet to use their new streaming service, so I started taking advantage of that, though I didn't start streaming regularly until I moved to Charlottesville in summer 2011, plugging my Macbook into my big boxy CRT television with a mini DVI to composite video adapter.
Around 2015, I started to notice that Netflix was slowly but surely removing its archival back catalogue from streaming while simultaneously pouring tons of money into its original programming--which, with a few exceptions, I never thought was very good. These trends snowballed over the next several years. I've probably been talking about canceling Netflix since 2018 or so. But there was still enough interesting programming to keep me hanging on, & through it all I continued to use the DVD mail service.
Over the past 2 or 3 years, though, I've noticed an even more insidious trend. I am pretty much convinced that Netflix original programming is not being made by humans anymore. At the bare minimum through the conceptualization & treatment stage, if not all the way through screenwriting & preproduction, I think these shows & films are being created by AIs that crunch massive amounts of customer analytics & spit out entertainment calculated to please various sizes of viewership cross-sections. As an artist & as someone who would love to make films one day, that offends me. It's even worse when it works. For instance, the Netflix original series Archive 81 seemed precisely calculated to appeal to me--me, specifically--from subject matter & writing all the way down to style & casting. I don't want that. I don't want to feel like a guinea pig for a robot focus group.
Let's go back to those first 3 DVDs I rented from Netflix. Roger Watkins's Last House on Dead End Street, H.G. Lewis's Blood Feast, & Clive Barker's Nightbreed are all intensely personal, quirky films full of their creators' auteurist obsessions. They are not wholly successful films. (I won't even argue that the first 2 are even good films.) They are messy & ambitious & ragged & human.
That's what film discovery has always been for me. I don't want to be spoonfed algorithmically perfect content anymore. I want to be left alone to discover my own weirdness. I want to buy random dollar store DVDs, I want to crowdfund indie dreamers, I want poke around in neglected corners of the internet for backyard SOV opuses with single-digit views on Letterboxd. I want to support freaks & weirdos making films outside anything recognizable as a "system" but at least they're made with authenticity & fucking passion. I don't want to be told what I'll like. I want to discover that for myself.
The more universal story here is how David slew Goliath & then indulged in gluttonous excess until he ended up taking the giant's place. But my personal story is a lot simpler: I miss humanity.
So goodbye & good riddance, Netflix. You did this to yourself.
I'm sure I have nostalgia for my late teens/early 20s, but I still maintain that the 2000s was a good era for mainstream rap music. The radio played a diversity of sound & subject matter, & emcees were still really, really rapping. 2004 was a year where you heard "Jesus Walks" & "Why?" by Jadakiss on Top 40 radio alongside "Drop It Like It's Hot" & "Lean Back," "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" & "I Like the Way You Move" sharing airplay with "Welcome Back" by Ma$e. At the tail end of this storied year, Ludacris dropped his 2nd consecutive #1 album, which I uphold as the best possible version of mainstream rap. The Red Light District is a fine example for anybody trying to court the pop charts & dancefloor without losing their artistic integrity, street cred, or hiphop bona fides.
First of all, Luda was really spitting on this album! Most of the time he favors relatively simple flows with clearly articulated punchlines, but every once in a while he'll break out the quick-tongue, go on a multi-syllable run or surprise you with an intriguing phrase ("Put the booty of a Swish' at the end of a flame" is one of the most creative ways I've ever heard to describe the lighting of a blunt, while also sounding really, probably unintentionally, gay). Luda is probably the best quick-tongue rapper who does it least often--he never wants to alienate his audience, & his pop instincts tell him that a little fast rap goes a long way.
Luda's commanding, booming vocal presence is helped by the absolutely huge production. This album sounds expensive, with lots of vocal tracks compressed up-front & layered thickly over every song. ONP takes a left turn from their trademark live band sound into "Blueberry Yum Yum," with a trippy keyboard line, sub bass & sparse drums underneath multitracked vocals from both Luda & Sleepy Brown. Luda imitates an echo effect with his voice, adding to the off-kilter cool of a great smoker's anthem. The sure-shot dancefloor combo of Timbaland & Ludacris join forces for "The Potion," with Tim's usual clattery percussion, squealing vocal chops & sinuous synths. There was no way this one wasn't going to go stupid in the club. We also get the obligatory "tryna get my life right" reflective song in the Teena Marie-sampling Nate Dogg feature "Child of the Night," where DK All Day does his best to capture Kanye's sound. Speaking of imitation, the album's weirdest production moment has to be "Spur of the Moment," featuring DJ Quik & produced by DTP's LT Moe. The track sounds exactly like a DJ Quik beat, which is fine in & of itself--it does a credible job of recreating the sundrenched, laidback Cali sound with its portamento synths. But it must have been weird for Quik to be invited to lay a guest verse on a poor man's version of one of his beats.
While we're on the subject of features, I've always wondered why you would pay a rapper to not rap. I guess it was flattering for DMX that they only wanted him on "Put Your Money" for a hook & an adlib, but my attitude is as long as you hired the guy, get him to drop a verse. I know Def Jam was good for it. At any rate, "Put Your Money" is a good example of what made Luda special in comparison to his peers: his albums had a diversity of subject matter. I don't think many other mainstream rap guys at the time were writing songs about being a compulsive gambler.
Yeah, I have some quibbles about this album. I love timpani, but the "Get Back" beat has way too much of it, to the point where it's almost constant. The Austin Powers references on "Number One Spot" did not age well (who really gives a shit about Austin Powers anymore?) but I doubt the song was really intended to stand the test of time (despite the opening line "I'm never going nowhere"), & I love the single-rhyme 1st verse. The album sags a bit in the middle, with generic tough-guy joints like "Pass Out" & "Who Not Me," but unlike a lot of albums this long, it comes roaring back at the end with album highlights like the bluesy Trick Daddy feature "Hopeless" & "Virgo." Yeah, I'm a Virgo, but I also don't really care about zodiac signs & I mostly love this song because Luda, Nas & Doug are all doing top-notch work, & by closing his album with it, Luda is paying respect to the old school, the origins of hiphop, & the NY scene while staying proudly southern.
I'll acknowledge that I'm likely biased because it was the only one I had on CD, but I think The Red Light District is probably Luda's best album. Chicken-n-Beer has some great songs but a lot of filler, & Word of Mouf is still a bit immature & undisciplined. This album found the 27-year-old emcee starting to emerge into grown man territory while still in touch with the fire & irreverence of his early career--& most importantly, aside from a few minor misfires, it still knocks to this day.
So, once again, let me reiterate how lowly I think of opinions, including my own. For clarification, here is an excerpt from my Fan Fun Opinions 01 Rant:
So, in my opinion, opinions mean absolutely nothing. Well, absolutely nothing as far as useful dialogue or cognitive consideration or problem solving or creativity or personal evolution or evolution of any sort, or really anything of substance or purpose at all. It was once said by a wise man, "opinion is the wilderness between ignorance and knowledge," or something like that. However... opinions are fun. They're fun to share and banter about with friends and peers and they're fun to sling around in casual socialization, but that's about as far as the usefulness goes. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy the hell out of some good ole opinion banter, as long as we all know that none of it REALLY matters... We know our opinions don't mean a thing here at biab, and we rejoice in that freedom and knowledge.
In that spirit, there is utterly no criteria for this list whatsoever outside of my own unapologetic subjective take, aka 'opinion'. So don't go getting all wound up about it. Just make a list of your own that is equally unsubstantiated. That's the beauty of opinions, no-one can prove them wrong. It is absolutely true that I think these are the worst films ever. Now, are they? Well, likely, of course not. First off, how could we ever determine such a thing about creative endeavors? Secondly, for god's sake, and this should be obvious, the list is greatly limited simply due to the fact that I haven't seen every film made. However, do consider that I rarely see "shitty" films on purpose, so there's that. For example, I've never seen a Fast and Furious anything, or Transformers, or the new Zach Snyder whatever, etc.
No more insight into this list of disapproval than that, but it will no doubt leave some bothered, angry, or head scratching. My answer - Don't take it so seriously, it's just my opinion.
So, with that classy clarification of my general outlook on opinions, I continue this fun little series of random and poorly thought out "top 10" lists. Enjoy our second Opinionfest installment.
Without further ado, my absolutely true opinion about the worst films that I have ever seen in full.
Top 10 Worst Films That I Have Ever Seen
Note: This list is comprised of the worst films that I have ever sat through in full. Major releases and films with distribution deals (including indie) are up for consideration. No student films or Festival films without distribution deals will be on the list - well, because that's no fun, it's mean spirited, and it's too easy. Plus, I might have to consider my own work on a list like that, so no way.
10.Walk the Line/I Saw the Light: Pretty much the same film, so ya know... Biopics that belittle the stories of fascinating people by minimizing them to a singularity and narrative-beat formula that misses the entire essence and special significance is an insult to the subject matter and an utterly vapid way to tell a story. You CANNOT tell an entire life in a linear comprehensive style in approximately 115 minutes. It's an absurd concept. How about this, reference Milk, Malcom X, Control, Naked Lunch or numerous others that did it in an innovative and respectful fashion. Sometimes an entire story can even be told through a single moment in a person's life. Imagine that. Even that Churchill film with Gary Oldman figured it out. That's all we needed to know about the man (well, other than the imperialistic tendencies, racism and mysoginy, but I'm sure they'll cover that in the next one).
9.The Holy Mountain: Well, this one is on here for some personal relativity for sure, as well as my formalist analysis of the film itself. This is the arthouse, avant-garde film that everyone seems to reference in conversation when trying to sound sophisticated and versed in edgy cinema. I guess it must pop up on Jeopardy a lot, and the sort. So, I'm tired of folks bringing it up assuming that I MUST adore it because it fits so neatly into my cannon of tastes, apparently. Yes, it has some pretty cool artistic imagery at times, but that is not enough unless maybe your name is Warhol. In reality, it's the most pretentious, self-indulgent, overly self-aware and not self-aware at all, transparently premeditated, "look at me" film that I've ever seen. Self indulgent nonsense that I can't fathom how anyone other than Jodorowsky himself could find value in, but I'm pretty sure he was fine with that - hence the problem. So, after you watched it and shook your head a little and had that thought, "Hmm? I don't think I got it?", I offer you this comfort - Don't sweat it, there was nothing to get. How about you check out Maya Deren, Luis Bunuel, Stan Brackhage, Jonas Mekas, Jean-Luc Godard and Guy Madden and get back to me.
8.Half Baked: Umm, do I really have to explain this one? I mean, Chappell himself thinks it's a giant stinker. I don't know how the stoners of the world weren't the most offended of all. This is the most patronizing and not funny cliche stoner film ever. There should have been a stoner uprising, but I think we all understand why that didn't happen. I hear it's had a bit of a retro-revival currently - that's a shame, and makes no sense. It's still terrible. How about a little Chris Tucker in Friday - now there's a great stoner film.
7.Jurassic Park (1993 original): It stinks. It really really stinks. I should just leave it at that, but I won't. Spielberg should be embarrassed. He should know better, but obviously doesn't. Yes, the special effects were fantastic and even age well, but without a story worth caring about, well, who cares? And, if I ever have to see or hear those screeching children again... Why do folks think casting children as annoying brats is appealing or appropriate? The kids I know are smart as hell and would never behave like those beasts. Umm, casting??? Really??? (with the exception of Goldblum, of course, but he couldn't even save this one). It seems like the masses agree that the sequel was kind of awful, but it's pretty much the same movie as the original, so I don't get the discrepancy in popular reception. My twelve year old nephew totally got how bad this film was on first viewing and humorously noted the weak storyline and characters the entire time, while agreeing that the special effects were cool - So why can't everyone else see it?
6. Plan 9 From Outer Space/Glen or Glenda: Yep, it's the quintessential cliche answer to worst American filmmaker and film ever, but sometimes there's a reason for cliches. The only debate is which is worse between these two "auteurist" Ed Wood films. Now, I don't in anyway think he was the worst filmmaker ever, and I have a sweet spot for ole Ed, hence the no. 6 ranking. He was endearingly honest in his pursuits (honest hearted that is, not necessarily an honest man, ha) though misguided. Glen and Glenda (which was personal to Ed Wood) deserves some credit for even attempting the subject matter in those times. It's actually a bit bewildering that it ever got made, but it's bewildering any of his films got made, and a whole lot did. So, go Ed! You really are an utterly inept filmmaker of the most joyous nature. I think Plan 9 has to take the stinker win between these two, but I'll leave it up for debate.
5.The Island: The only Michael Bay movie that I have ever seen in full. A good film production friend of mine that commonly disagrees with my cinematic perspective (with intelligent, aware fervor) got me to watch this in an attempt to prove that Bay had actual filmmaking chops. Yeah, his attempt backfired terribly. All I can assume is that the others go downhill from here, but I'm not sure how you go much lower. Michael Bay is not a filmmaker. He's something, but not a filmmaker. No need to show a parody or critique for something that does the work for itself. Enjoy.
4. Catwoman: Just a giant piece of %&*# in every regard. Have no idea why it was ever made. Well, yes I do, but it's not good. If I were being completely honest with this list and looking at nothing other than what happens between those four magic lines, this may actually be the "worst film" I have ever seen, period. It won Four Razzies, including Worst Actress for Halle Berry, who impressively embraced the badness.
3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: How dare you?! Just, how dare you?! I can't even discuss this one comfortably, as it trampled childhood love and magic with the fury that only an old fart Lucas could muster. Yes, I actually blame Lucas more than Spielberg, but both of their hands are dirty, and never shall I forgive them. To understand my full intensity of feelings on this, watch South Park, The China Problem, S12 E8 . I couldn't possibly express it better.
2. The Blind Side: One of the most blind films that I have ever seen (see what I did there?) Racist, inconsiderate, white savior, belittling, embarrassingly bad melodramatic nonsense that does real damage. Everyone involved in this movie owes the modern world and the should-be hero of the film, Michael Oher, an infinite apology. A film about racism, made by white people harboring racist perspectives. Hmm? How did that turn out? Well, I hear the Academy loved it - but you know, self congratulatory white people congratulating themselves - it's just what they do. Not to mention, the production quality and performances played like a bad ABC after-school special from 1984. It made the afternoon soaps look high-brow. So, you know, on top of being blatantly racist, there's that.
1.Avatar 3D:James Cameron, you take the cake! - but it's digitally generated, so don't try to eat it.
Oh goodness, here we go. I'll try to keep it simple, the way Cameron kept his script - so simple it read like a seventh grader wrote it. And, if a 13 year old had written it, I probably would have given the kid a B, or at least a C plus for effort, but Cameron is a grown man with an enormous budget to play games in front of green screens. Mr. Cameron, what to say. You're just the worst. You may play interesting games once in awhile, but you are no great filmmaker. Not even in the discussion, regardless of what your ego (likely a hologram of Sigourney Weaver) whispers in your ear at night.
Remind me, how did that bold prediction you made about 3D taking over cinema go? Weren't you going to be the father of the new 3D cinematic standard? Hmm?
Walter Murch (arguably the most respected film editor and sound designer in modern cinema, winner of an Academy Award in 1979 for a little editing project know as Apocalypse Now, and the author of the preeminent guide to film editing theory, In the Blink of an Eye) wrote this about 3D and it's relevancy, partly in response to Cameron's assertions:
"It doesn't work with our brains and it never will. The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous. The case is closed...
dark, small, stroby, headache inducing, alienating. And expensive. The question is: how long will it take people to realize and get fed up?" Damn right.
So, if Avatar had been a digital image experiment, a short to show off technological advancements, or a video game on display at a SXSW tech tent, maybe it would have held up. As a movie, it's the most adolescent and tone deaf attempt at an environmental message ever, and once again, I'm pretty sure it was written by a 13 year old boy named James Cameron. Lucky for everyone, he has spent the last decade or so making "the sequels that nobody asked for." Maybe it'll give me a reason to revise this list.
Oh yeah, and Alien over Aliens for life! How is that even a discussion? Ridley Scott would bite off Cameron's head in a caged death match. Just saying.
*Special Mention - Most Recent "worst" film that I've seen: The French Dispatch
If you pay attention to the Optical Files annals, you'll certainly notice a pattern in the type of singer-songwriters I grew up on: sentimental but not too cheesy; rootsy but not too country; humbly poetic, slightly sardonic, with unconventional singing voices; exclusively white & exclusively male. One trope that appears over & over is the "wounded man." All of the above-linked songwriters use this archetype (though Kristofferson's friend Prine largely sidesteps it), but it's particularly ubiquitous in Kris's work. Whether he's speaking in 1st person ("Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," "The Best of All Possible Worlds") or 3rd person ("Billy Dee," "The Pilgrim: Chapter 33"), his songs are heavily populated by down & out drunks with hearts of gold, damaged souls who talk a slick game but keep getting in their own way, & who just need the patient love of a good woman to make them whole again. "The Pilgrim" is probably the apotheosis of Kris's work in this mode: "He's a poet, he's a picker, he's a prophet, he's a pusher, he's a pilgrim & a preacher & a problem when he's stoned." Unfortunately, the prominence of the "lovable fuckup" in popular culture has given a lot of guys permission to fuck up with the assurance that they'll still be lovable. Kris's hero might be "running from his devils & reaching for the stars," but in real life a lot of these dudes forgot about the reaching for the stars part, & decided to skip the running & just embrace their devils instead, & if you get exasperated with them it's because you lack the compassion to see them as picaresque cowboys in a country song. It's one of the many ways our culture (for a long time now) reinforces the "boys will be boys" narrative, not only excusing but actually rewarding shitty male behavior. Perhaps the most barefaced example is "The Silver Tongued Devil and I," where Kris claims a split personality: the nice guy who just wants to get to know a lady, & the smooth-talking "devil" who'll say whatever he needs to get her in bed. Guess which side wins this battle of wills every time, allowing Kris to hold himself blameless because it's not actually him doing it?
While they are superficially less screwed up than the men, the women Kris writes about don't get the benefit of the same depth. The men are flawed but at least dynamic, complete humans. The women in these songs (when they appear at all) are one-dimensional, idealized angels & saints: either tragic memories ("Jody and the Kid," "Me and Bobby McGee"), innocent victims of manipulation and heartbreak ("The Silver Tongued Devil and I"), or long-suffering nurturers who are always there to pick up the pieces ("Help Me Make It Through the Night"). Whatever the particular flavor, women in these songs are always objects of love and/or lust, always exist to move the wounded man further along in his journey. No, it's not Kristofferson's fault. He didn't invent these tropes (once you tune into them you realize they are FUCKING EVERYWHERE in our mass media), but he is pretty consistent in his employment of them, & given his intelligence & leftist political perspective, you kind of hope he would break or at least challenge these patterns.
Speaking of challenging patterns: while leftist Americana fans tend to think that Republicans invaded & colonized our Workers of the World music tradition, the reality is that country music holds a pretty obvious appeal for conservatives, & even fascists, with its romanticizing of the past. Is there even such a thing as futurist country music? (Maybe Johnny Cash's verse on "Highwayman," but we'll get to that.) Kris's oeuvre is full of songs that idealize bygone times, whether it be gutter drunks longing for the simple days of childhood ("Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," "Just the Other Side of Nowhere"), or parting couples wanting to return to when their relationship was strong ("For the Good Times," "Once More With Feeling"). Kris does challenge this trope a few times, the most interesting being "Casey's Last Ride." In a similar way to Guy Clark's "The Last Gunfighter Ballad," the song uses form to interrogate both modernity & the genre's obsession with mythologizing the past. Both the title & the musical arrangement lead us to believe we're getting an old-fashioned cowboy ballad, when in fact we are treated to a vaguely-worded story about a modern man with a lonely, unfulfilled life--the sad fallout of all that romanticized ramblin' & gamblin'.
If you've noticed that most of the songs I'm referencing are from Kris's first 2 albums, that's because this compilation, while purporting to be a career retrospective covering everything up to the late 1990s, focuses heavily on 1970 & 1971. Those first 2 albums are reproduced almost in their entirety, while later albums only get represented by a track or 2, & some albums, like 1990's brashly leftist Third World Warrior, are skipped entirely. I've made my thoughts on best-ofs known in this series, but I will say that when it comes to country music, compilations make a little more sense. The genre tends to be more song-driven than album-driven, singles have historically been more important than LPs, & artists tend to play a lot of covers & even self-covers. Still, this collection, being so disproportionately focused on a narrow slice of time, can't really claim to be a career summation. You could just listen to the Kristofferson & The Silver Tongued Devil and I albums back to back, get all the same songs as Disc 1 of this compilation, & it would only take 10 minutes longer. Okay, let's say for the sake of argument that those first 2 albums contain the bulk of Kris's best songs, & there are only a few gems scattered here & there among subsequent records. In that case, why include "Highwayman," which Kris didn't even write? Just because it was a hit? The production, lyrical perspective & group dynamic makes it vastly different from the other, rootsier, solo songs on this compilation. Even if you like that song (I do), it sticks out like a sore thumb.
It may sound like I'm coming down a little hard on old Kris here, but in reality he has a whole raft of classics under his belt. The songs can be deceptively musical, too: witness the jazzy vibraphone chords & offbeat, Willie Nelson-style phrasing of "Just the Other Side of Nowhere" & the big bold key change in the middle of "Me and Bobby McGee." Kris's reputation as a songwriter is unchallenged, but I think he's underrated as a performer. While there are dozens of high-profile covers of his songs by other artists, I tend to think that Kris's recordings of his own songs are almost always better. (The major exception, of course, is Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee.") Kris's gentle, inexorably building arrangement of "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" is more moving than Johnny Cash's strident version built atop that old Cash 2-step. The raw sadness & resignation of "For the Good Times" are grittier in Kris's hands than in the swooning, polished Ray Price chart-topper.
I used to love strumming & singing my simplified version of "Just the Other Side of Nowhere" when I was living overseas, an hour's drive down a dirt road on what many people would consider quite literally the other side of nowhere, thinking about home. Once I returned to the land of fast-food billboards & supermarket bread aisles the size of an entire developing-world grocery store, I still played the song, but now the other side of nowhere meant something different. Back then I fancied myself one of Kris's lovable fuckups, the ones who keep rolling those dice for a chance to clean up their act. Later on, Kris found sobriety & sharpened his political consciousness, started writing songs about inequality & speaking truth to power. It seems Kris & I grew up in the same way, so it's no surprise I feel some kinship with him. His early work gives us beautifully written but unexamined assumptions about artistic masculinity, & his later work shows us a more nuanced way forward. I just wish this compilation--like country music as a whole--weren't so stuck in the past.
Lemme keep it a stack: for a number of reasons, I'm trying to get away from the mental framework that pits rappers against each other. All those Top 5s & rankings & GOAT conversations, etc. 1st of all, obviously, art is subjective. But even if we think in terms of "favorites" rather than "bests," I still don't think art lends itself to ordinal ranking; it's kind of antithetical to the spirit in which most art is made. Specifically as it pertains to hiphop (where this kind of thinking is encouraged more than any other music culture), the mindset of competition that encourages rappers to be their best selves ("steel sharpens steel") also creates the kind of backbiting mentality that is poison to local music scenes. So the more years pass, the more I try to deprogram myself of the tendency, ingrained to some extent in every hiphop head, to rate & rank & elevate some emcees to the detriment of others.
With that being said: fuck you, Big Pun was nicer than your favorite rapper. Yep, that one too.
Despite about 4 dozen feature appearances & an unfinished, cobbled-together sophomore album, Pun's legacy rests on this debut LP, the only album he completed during his lifetime--& what a legacy it is! Pun was a rapper's rapper, & every verse is an absolute masterclass in rhyme writing. Beyond the headspinning multis, assonance out the ass, internal rhymes nested inside other internal rhymes, startling turns of phrase & unexpected poetic devices, what impresses you most about this album is his consistency. The dude never phones it in, never strikes out--never even bunts. Every single verse is a screaming moonshot over the grandstands. That holds true whether he's solo or collaborating, whether he's working in a hardcore or pop milieu. Not long ago, I asked on social media whether there is a high-charting rap song more lyrically intricate than "Still Not a Player." There might be a few ("Ms. Jackson" by Outkast, Naughty By Nature's "O.P.P."), but I still maintain "Still Not a Player" is in class by itself. When other rappers said "I want this to be a single so I'mma simplify my bars a little bit," Pun said "hold my Big Gulp."
But of course, that's not the album's preeminent lyrical workout. I'd probably vote for "The Dream Shatterer," which is the closest he gets on the album to a straight-up ego trip song, i.e. "rappity-rap." I know a lot of people disdain the practice of rapping about rapping for the sake of rapping, but I don't know how that's possible when Pun breaks out like this: "You ain't promised mañana in the rotten manzana/Come on, pana, we need more rhymers/Feel the marijuana snakebite, anaconda/A man of honor wouldn't wanna try to match my persona/Sometimes rhyming I blow my own mind, like Nirvana/Comma, and go the whole 9 like Madonna/Go try to find another rhymer with my kinda grammar."
All those multisyllables suggest a clear forefather to Pun's style, & that's Kool G Rap. Superficially their styles are very similar, but in my writeup on The Giancana Story I shared my opinion that G Rap is so good that it gets boring after a while. Pun sidesteps this trap by doing a few things differently: first, his flow is a lot more nimble than G Rap's: he slows down to emphasize his punchlines, speeds up on the onramp to another rhythmic run, switches into triplet flow & back again mid-rhyme scheme. He also has more flavor in his voice, varying his inflection in contrast to G Rap's hardcore monotone. He also just generally has more humor & charisma, offering a certain geniality that doesn't interfere with his gangsta affectations. The closest Pun comes to G Rap's style is the title track, where he raps in a measured monotone & maintains a steady flow of almost uninterrupted syllables. That's a shame, because the song is conceptually interesting, comparing white supremacy's systemic condemnation of the ghetto to a death sentence. It doesn't help that Pun is joined on that song by Prospect, his most monotone compatriot. Pun also echoes G Rap's absurd sex rhymes in the song "I'm Not A Player," which features such bizarre & anatomically ignorant boasts as "Climbing up the walls with my balls banging off your hymen." I try to stay away from Biggie comparisons because he & Pun don't really have that much in common other than stature, but this song is obviously "One More Chance"--you know, the 1 track that keeps Ready To Die from being a flawless album & should have been swapped out for its remix?
Pun's bars are clearly the star of this album, & when you have something so lyrically dense, the main thing you want from the production is that it not interfere with the words. Most of the beats satisfy that, offering a gritty, often sinister gym mat for the lyrics to perform their acrobatics on top of. There are a few musical standouts, though, like the movie-score dramatic strings of Domingo's "The Dream Shatterer," the Latin jazz horns of "You Came Up" by Rockwilder, or Knobody's poppy pianos on "Still Not a Player." Showbiz contributes the beat for the closer "Parental Discretion," whose wonky, off-kilter keys sounds like it was tailor-made for Busta Rhymes to demolish, so it's a little odd that he only contributes the hook & a spoken-word outro.
Speaking of "Parental Discretion": in my memory, Capital Punishment was full of bangers but overlong & frontloaded. Well,it is certainly long, but it is most definitely not frontloaded! For an album of this length, actually, it's remarkably well-sequenced. Early-album standouts like the Black Thought feature "Super Lyrical" (you have to be crazy confident as an emcee to go toe-to-toe with Thought) are balanced out by late-album highlights like the aforementioned closer & the RZA-produced "Tres Leches (Triboro Trilogy)" ft. Prodigy & Instectah Deck, which gets my nomination for the most NY rap song of all time. It's hard to make a 73-minute album feel coherent & unbloated, but Pun pulls it off through sheer artistic vision. Most of the time when I revisit a well-loved album for this series, I find myself in a nitpicking, critical frame of mind. This time, I actually came out of my analytical listen liking the album more.
Hearing, seeing & thinking about Pun always makes me a little sad. Here was a brilliant writer, a once-a-generation talent, whose life was cut tragically short simply because he couldn't make his body do what he wanted. Why are some things preternaturally easy for people & others preternaturally difficult? You can feel this struggle against cosmic unfairness in songs like "Fast Money" & "Capital Punishment," where if you strip away the gangsta bravado you're left with the anxious pleas of a gifted young man who feels like the world is spinning out of control, looping a lasso of intricately braided words to rein it in--trying to outrap a runaway train. I think this fueled a lot of the anger that was evident in both his music & his personal life. I won't sugarcoat it, because I know we've all seen that footage of Pun pistolwhipping his wife. There is no justification for spousal abuse, but it's a fact that hurt people hurt people, & while he was less nakedly confessional than some other emcees, we can make some pretty safe inferences about the source of his hurt. Being betrayed by his body again & again behind a relatively simple task that most other people seem to accomplish without any work at all must have been baffling for him, especially since he had seemingly effortless powers of eloquent self-expression.
I know my readership here is an enlightened crowd, but I feel the need to say this anyway: stop making fun of fat people. Stop assuming that being fat is a choice, or the result of laziness or poor self-control. As a matter of fact, stop fixating on other people's bodies altogether. I promise it's better that way.
I have to admit that I've been a poser when it comes to this album. I bring it up all the time in conversation when I put forward my contention that Busta Rhymes is the best emcee with no classic albums. He has classic songs, classic verses, huge impact on the culture, but never made a 5/5 album. When I present people with this take, I always say, "of course, that's assuming you don't count Leaders of the New School." But friends, I have a confession to make & here's where the poser part comes in: I've really never listened to A Future Without a Past... enough to make that determination. I bought the CD off the strength of "Case of the P.T.A." but I doubt I listened to it more than a handful of times. Not because I disliked it, but just because it was long & kind of odd & at the time I got the CD my interests were elsewhere...you know how it goes. Sometimes you can acknowledge that a record is good even if it's not clicking with you at the moment. So this one got put away & I never got around to revisiting it, but periodically I would think about it & it went down in my head as a great, classic album--just one I didn't have much interest in listening to. So, upon this long-delayed revisit, did it live up to my memory?
1st of all, the name Leaders of the New School feels kind of ironic, because what Buss, Dinco & Charlie flex is a style that was already retro even in 1991. The energetic, uptempo style with lots of hypemanning call & response is reminiscent of the unison routines of some of the earliest rap groups. Their innocent subject matter, mostly discussing the rather mundane travails of high school students--chasing girls, dealing with bullies, smarting off to teachers, believing in yourself--must have seemed quaint in an NYC scene that was already being taken over by hardcore rap. Within this framework, the guys manage to walk the line between being childlike & being childish--they interject with snatches of Disney songs & nursery rhymes, & at one point Charlie Brown literally sings the entire ABC song. But thanks to the guys' nimble flows & interesting wordplay, it's all shot through with a hip intelligence & street smarts.
One contemporary group that comes to mind as a comparison is De La Soul: LONS have a similar freewheeling, goodnatured energy, & the beats, while not as left-field as Prince Paul's off-the-wall sample collages, have the same gleeful unpredictability. Check out Vibe Chemist Backspin's work on "What's the Pinocchio's Theory?", which manages to incorporate both Dixieland jazz & bagpipe music into its sonic stew. The Long Island boys also got some help from Eric "Vietnam" Sadler from the Bomb Squad, whose best beat on here is the moody "Sob Story," a lowkey epic punctuated by wonky piano scrawls.
My understanding is that part of the reason the group split is because the other members got tired of Busta stealing the show all the time, & I'm sorry to fuel that particular fire, but he absolutely does. On the other hand, Dinco & Charlie are no slouches--they all set themselves apart with distinctive flows, deliveries & lyrical perspectives. True, future icon Bussa Buss outshines his partners with his sandpaper voice & dancehall-inflected flavor, but at no point does it feel like The Busta Rhymes Show Featuring LONS--well, except for "Feminine Fatt," Busta's solo celebration of cellulite where he even manages to make lines like "Spandex makes small fat look real fat/I'd rather deal with fat that is actual fat" sound dope.
So was I right? Is A Future Without a Past... a true classic? Well, for one thing, I still think it's too long. Occasionally it feels like listening to a slightly less out-there De La Soul. But aside from just being a good record, I can see how it is positioned between 2 eras. The members' camaraderie & their slang-heavy worldbuilding almost seem to anticipate the rise Wu-Tang, while at the same time honoring hiphop's most primitive traditions. (Maybe the group name was more apt than I gave it credit for.) For that alone, plus being a breeding ground for Busta's talents, this one goes down as iconic. He still never made a great album on his own though.
