Look, I clowned the dude pretty hard the last time I wrote about him, but the truth is, aside from his weird obsession with being white that led him to associate with some dodgy characters (more on that when we get to Crackavelli), at his peak Haystak was a fine emcee with a distinctive sound & authorial voice. The problem I pointed out with From Start to Finish handicaps Car Fulla White Boys even more fully: simply put, the early 2000s were not a good time for indie rap production. As I've written about many times in this series, 2 dovetailing phenomena--fear of sample clearance lawsuits & the still relatively primitive state of software instruments--forced producers even slightly outside the major-label system to rely on a whole lot of cheap & cheesy MIDI. The beats here are all by Street Flavor Records mastermind Sonny Paradise, & I can't say the guy is bad at what he does. He has a fine ear for composition & texture, but the tools he has to work with are just inadequate for the task. The escalating MIDI horns & orchestrations on "Need It Get It" are woeful, but they sound positively pristine compared to the unspeakably corny AM radio sub-gospel brass of "Love You Like." It's a shame, because while the former song is no great shakes lyrically, the latter really had potential as a tribute to Stak's grandparents. It's in these moments of vulnerability that Stak really comes alive as a lyricist, but sadly the instrumental just isn't equal to the task.
The album does have a few bright spots production-wise: the Geto Boys-interpolating "Everybody Wants to Ride" is suitably rough-edged; "Wish You Could See Me" finds Stak at the bedside of his friend who is slowly dying from bullet wounds, & as his vivid descriptions of the crime & its aftermath increase in their desperation, the compositional texture thickens, from eerie acoustic guitar to strings to drums to even more strings. It's a striking piece, & a testament to what Stak's pen could do when he was serious. The most interesting instrumental, though, is the strident, bluesy "Brother Like Me." Here we get some live instruments--piano, organ, fretless bass, trumpet--& it hits harder than all the MIDI in the world. Lyrically, though, I'm not sure about Haystak's use of the word "brother" in reference to himself, nor of the way the song seems to romanticize his mistreatment of his girlfriend ("every day I put you through so much pain") in support of a "love is blind" type moral.
On "Ride," Stak answers hypothetical critics who question his reasons for making music: "I'm motivated by the paper, pussy & diamonds/But in the back of my mind, a part of me still exists/That still writes rhymes for the thrill of killing lyricists." I get it--at that particular time & place, it wasn't fashionable for an emcee to want to just be an emcee. I'm of the opinion that Haystak spent a bit too much time on this album focused on superficial things, & attempting to court the radio & dancefloor with the tepid hooks of songs like "Dollar" & "Down South Players." Later albums would work out some of the problems that plagued this one: the production got a little more polished, Stak let his lyricist-killing instincts run a little more rampant, & he even injected some social consciousness--while not going too far down the "victimized white boy" hole that would later swallow up some of the goodwill he generated. Car Fulla White Boys doesn't quite hit any of the right notes often enough to have much replay value--but for a fully independent hiphop album from Tennessee, you have to admire how far they were able to take it.
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