The same year Geto Boys dropped We Can't Be Stopped, which for better or for worse is their signature album, Scarface decided to ride that momentum to a solo career. With Face carrying the entire album with zero features (not to be confused with Z-Ro features), & taking an active role in the production side as well, Mr. Scarface is Back feels like a 1-man effort, setting the stage for the insular journeys into the psyche that his solo albums would increasingly become. This aggressively solo-dolo approach suggests that, despite the way he is credited on the album cover, Face Mob wanted to create something distinctive outside of the group atmosphere. There is a greater emphasis on storytelling here--almost every song has at least an element of narrative--but still, it shouldn't have surprised anyone that the songwriting approach is pretty reminiscent of the Geto Boys.
I've written before about how Scarface's solo career tended to ping-pong between sprawling, multifaceted albums & minimalist to-the-point projects. At 45 minutes, & with no features, Mr. Scarface is Back is the latter. Still, he manages to cover a fair amount of ground in terms of both style & subject matter. You can hear a lot of his career's common topics being developed here. More generally, this is the album where Face realized he didn't need to yell 100% of the time to be a compelling deliverer of gangsta shit. His reliable, albeit absurd, sex boasts show up on "The Pimp," where he uses a laid-back flow that shows up again on the mortality musing "A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die." "Diary of a Madman" sets the stage for the psychological headtrips he specialized in later like "The Wall," & he even speaks glowingly about adopting the son of his dead opp (!) on "Good Girl Gone Bad."
The best song here, & in my opinion one of Face's best ever, is another conceptual track: the short album closer "I'm Dead." He narrates from the perspective of an innocent drive-by bystander who gradually realizes over the course of the day that he's dead. Driven by an infectious funky organ loop, Face's narrator speaks plainly about the situation, unfolding details that shore up the banality of everyday tragedy. The casual delivery makes the story more chilling than all the graphic sound & fury of a song like "Born Killer."
The CD packaging is cheap, in classic Rap-A-Lot style, with a blank insert & no liner notes to speak of. There are no production credits for the individual songs, but the internet tells me that Crazy C, Bido & Doug King worked on the beats in addition to Scarface himself. Sometimes the album feels like a breakbeat library, with classic much-sampled loops like "Impeach the President," "Funky Drummer," "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby," "Synthetic Substitution" & "The Payback" all making appearances. The crate-digging doesn't go particularly deep, but that doesn't matter. Even if you've heard these loops a thousand times (& you have), Scarface sounds so damn confident & convincing over them that you can't help but be swept along. I mean, we don't really listen to gangsta rap for wholly original ideas anyway, right? It's all about presentation, which Scarface pulls off with aplomb. The fact that he manages some unique perspectives along the way in songs like "I'm Dead" & "A Minute to Pray..." just proves, if any proof were needed, that he's one of the all-time greats.
& that's it! My final Optical Files CD writeup. This has been fun, exhaustive, & a little exhausting. Stay tuned in the next few days for one last post to wrap everything up. Thanks for sticking with me!
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