The Optical Files #118: Scarface - Last of a Dying Breed (2000)

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 Yours to 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.