The Raw Addict 11.22.09: Second Wind
Posted by Phil Watts, Jr on 11.22.2009
This week, it's disappointments of the decade, part two…and what they need to do about it!
Hello, everyone…
Last week, I talked about disappointing album over the past ten years, and they ways the artist sprung back with better shit. This time, it's about artist who dropped disappointments, but have yet to spring back. For part 2, I decided to handle this similar to my SECOND WIND series of columns--take a vocalist and pair them up with a producer that might make their music better.
Fat Joe, J.O.S.E.
I remember when Masta Ace came out with "Born 2 Roll" (a.k.a. the "Jeep Ass Nigga" remix) as well as the SITTIN' ON CHROME album, where he puts a little West Coast Funk in his sound. Because of that, Fat Joe dissed him in magazines like Vibe & RapPages, labeling him a sellout for it.
Years later, after the success of his protégé, the late, great Big Pun, Fat Joe's been breaking his neck trying to get club hits, leading to some of his weakest, inconsistent string of albums. Yeah, he's have a joint or two for THE STREETS (usually produced by either ALC or Premier) and then fill the rest of the album with tacky radio and club attempts. Come to think of it, I could've chosen any of his post-Pun era albums, but I chose this one because of "What's Luv". Ugh.
However, despite his continuous quests for mainstream love, the mainstream hardly shows him any. In fact, the only reason--and I mean the ONLY REASON--the mainstream gives him much love at all is because of his connection to Big Pun…and even then, they think that he is Big Pun's protégé! However, once the 'novelty' wore off, they pushed him aside for other HOT-HOT-HOT industry cattle like Fitty Cent.
WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE HIM DO:
Come back home.
To me, a voice like Fat Joe's shouldn't be on some "Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest"/MTV/club shit getting airplay with Miley Cyrus. You see, Big Pun was able to jump the fence between Hardcore and club because he had that IT factor and it fit well for him. The same can't be said for Fat Joe. His voice was built for ruff 'n' ruffed. The reason why his first two albums, REPRESENT and JEALOUS ONES ENVY were solid is because he stayed in that lane, while everything after that ranged from EHHH to UGH.
Not only should Joe continue working with people like ALC and Premier, but he should also get back with his old DITC friends Diamond & Showbiz, who should resurrect the sound he brought to Show & AG's GOODEFLLAS and FULL SCALE. Now a lot of people will say, "But Fat Joe ain't never sold no records with DITC producing them!" NEWS FLASH: Fat Joe ain't never sold no records with "LEAN BACK" either! That's right, kids! Despite the massive airplay and exposure "Lean Back" got, it wasn't enough to get his Terror Squad compilation to sell worth a shit!
By the way…whatever it is that happened between you and Cuban Link--straighten it out, will you?
LL Cool J, G.O.A.T.
This is another case where I just drew the album title from a hat, because let's face it…every album since MAMA SAID KNOW YOU OUT ranged from iffy to wack, with a few spurts of ‘decent' that come few and far between. In the edgier cuts, it seems that he tries too hard to prove himself to be the same vicious MC he was when he first came out, and failing. Meanwhile, his girly-girl songs keep reaching new levels of sappiness each year.
WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE HIM DO:
LL is still a capable MC with a huge following…99% of which wear high heels. So you know what? I would make full use of that. I mean, ladies have to listen to shit too, right? So my move would to be for LL to continue the Ladies Love direction…but only to make the music more mature. And I would give that job to one man…9th Wonder.
I would love for both LL & 9th to rack their brains and really come up with different kinds of slow jams. Don't worry--he'd still do the up-tempo ‘lyrical monster' numbers, but the focus would be on slow jams. With LL being the pioneer of the Hip-Hop ballad, it would be great to have him be a part of a project that would do more with the Hip-Hop slow jam than what's already been done.
The Pharcyde, PLAIN RAP
The Pharcyde, HUMBOLDT BEGINNINGS
(Slim Kid) Tre Hardison, LIBERATION>
Life after the break-up has not been kind to the once wild and wholly quartet. After dropping the forgettable TESTING THE WATERS EP, the Lip-less Pharcyde comes out with PLAIN RAP, which despite a few decent beats (like the Showbiz-produced "Frontline", winds up just as forgotten. An ill-advised video featuring Fatlip being duped into dressing like a clown didn't help (and neither did bringing in Black Thought to burn them on their own shit! Then Tre dropped out to flirt with some chicks on the Real World and drop some boring-ass neo-soul shit, reducing them to a duo, Romye & Imani, embarrassing themselves with the horrible HUMBOLDT BEGINNINGS, which no one recalls having heard. Out of all the post break-up Pharcyde releases, only Fatlip's THE LONELIEST PUNK was remotely decent.
WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE THEM DO:
As you can see, they already took the first step: GETTING BACK TOGETHER.
They plan on just performing their old shit until they get their synergy back…THEN they'll think of new material. In my opinion, the moment they think of making new material, they need to make a call to Prince Paul immediately. He is the only one that can bring the Pharcyde back to the lighthearted feel they once had. No need to name examples. You should already have those first couple of De La records already.
By the way…remember this little Souls Of Mischief/Pharcyde project?
Maybe it's time to revisit this concept…only this time, with ALL EIGHT OF THEM. Fund it.
Guru, STREET SCRIPTURES 7.0 and 8.0: LOST & FOUND
September 1, 2005.
That was when The Guru went on SOHH.com and first revealed that he split from Premier. Things got worse as the years went by, as Guru started losing himself more and more, first by beefin' with soundboard engineers over a damn name, to acting salty every time people ask him about Premier. Things don't get any better when his new producer Solar's material ranges from mediocre to horrible. THIS was the final straw for me:
WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE THEM DO:
It boils down to three options:
1) Solar needs to step his game up. Right now, whether he wants to accept it or not, he is J.D. Nichols standing around in Lionel Richie's spot! It's like this---even DJ Premier started off shaky and took a while before developing his sound. Solar is put in a position where he has to wear some humongous shoes, which makes being a newcomer even harder. This means he needs to put in some serious work to developed a sound that fits Guru and puts himself on the map.
2) Guru needs to think back on how he's grown as an artist, all those projects that he worked on, from making his own beats to spearheading a project that involves lots of established artists…and realize that he is capable of doing this himself. Take all the things he's learned while working with Premier and while working with all those established artists, create his own sound and be a self-contained artist.
3) "Hey yo…Preme? You doing anything right now?"
Ali Shaheed Muhammad, SHAHEEDULLAH & STEREOTYPES
With Q-Tip busy with his solo career, and Phife giving us his own solo album before difficulties from diabetes got in the way, everyone seemed to overlook Ali. First came his involvement Lucy Pearl, with Raphael Saadiq and EnVogue's Dawn Robinson. Not only did Ali make a few beats with the outfit, he even tried his hand on the bass as well.
After the group dissolved, Ali tried his hand at his own compilation album. Sadly, with the exception of a handful of songs ("Lord Can I Have This Mercy" with Chip-Fu and "Tight" with Kay) there's hardly a hint of the Ali that helped make the Tribe albums classics. Most of the album was boring attempts at neo-soul, which did nothing for him. Even worse, Ali even tried to RAP (in "Industry" and "Elevated Orange"). Ugh. The less said about that the better.
Ali needs to get inspired again. He was a beast on the boards back in the day. He needs to look back at the music he made and the impact it made, and think, "Damn…I made some ill shit back in the day". This sound is solely missed and he needs to work on getting it back.
J-Dilla's no longer around to play the fall-guy anymore. Go to the studio and get back to work.
Oh…and don't EVER…EVER-EVER-EVER-EVER step foot in a vocal booth ever again!
Ultramagnetic MC's, BEST KEPT SECRET
Question: How does a group of this stature go from THIS:
…to THIS:
Ugh. I feel like getting myself checked for STD's after watching that one.
It's hilarious, and tragic at the same time. To see such a trailblazing group, a group that had rhymes like no one else and made beats like no one else…and now have been reduced to THIS. After over a decade of Kool Kieth solo albums--some solid (SEX STYLE, OCTAGON, and DOOOM), some horrid (MATTHEW and pretty much everything afterward), the once-innovative quartet reunites to find themselves way out-of-practice. TR & Moe can't quite make beats the way they used to--mostly because Keith wants to steer clear of samples (with the exception of "Mechanism Nice") in favor of the same shitty synth-out production that has made his last several solo albums so horrendously unlistenable. To make things 10 times worse, Ced Gee's attempt at a jigged-out rap style is just flat-out embarrassing. The end result is an album that is such an embarrassment to music in general that it left many of their fans WISHING that it's all a parody.
WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE THEM DO:
1) Whatever drugs they must be on, they need to seriously PUT IT DOWN.
2) Whatever went on between you guys and Godfather Don, Automator, and Kutmaster Kurt…PLEASE straighten it out.
3) "BRING IT DOWN TO EARTH--I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!" With Ced, TR & Moe out of the loop for a long while, Kieth could stand to slow it down a bit. Instead of going off on some other shit, they should simply test the waters with a release that isn't out to break new ground. Once they've all broken in, THEN they can all start going back to being the innovators that we grew up with. Also, they could stand to get a little help from those past collaborators that I mentioned in option #2.
…or if they'd rather continue this direction of seriously fucked-up music, at least throw in some TIM DOG every once in a while!
The AlkohoLiks, THE X.O. EXPERIENCE
J-Ro, Tash, and E-Swift have spent years dropping classic party joints like "Only When I'm Drunk", "DAAAM", "Make Room", and "Mary Jane", only to suffer through disappointing sales (which is a crime if you ask me). One day, in hopes of getting their numbers up, they shortening their name to THE LIKS, and tried to get Skateboard P to give them a few tracks to help them sell some units. Not only didn't it get them new fans, they wound up losing some of the fans they had. They then dropped the EHH-worthy FIREWATER as their last horrah.
WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE THEM DO:
The answer, in my opinion, is right in front of their faces:
Madlib is more than some quirky, way-out, jazz shit. As MADLIB REMIXES 2 proves, he could bring in that ol' West Coast Funk. Instead of giving him tracks per record, I'd give him the keys and let him roll with it. If Madlib wanted to, he could bring it back to the days of THE TRIFLIN' ALBUM. Matter of fact, I'd call up King Tee and bring him in, too!
Nas, HIP-HOP IS DEAD
When I reviewed this album years ago, I've gotten nothing but nonstop hate-mail for it. People just couldn't understand how someone possibly couldn't feel an album where the author of "Oochie Wally", "You Owe Me", and "Hate Me Now" talks about how fucked up Hip-Hop is. Granted, there were some good songs in there, like "Where Are They Now", but I would've felt the whole thing a lot more of he acknowledged hs own roll in Hip-Hop's downfall instead of pointing the finger at everyone else. He would then drop the album formerly known as NIGGER, where he tries to bring back the BDP/PE style political Hip-Hop…but with the same mediocre tracks that made some of his past projects suffer.
WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE HIM DO:
First, since Nas is at his absolute best when OTHER PEOPLE pick his beats, I would hand the Executive Producer role over to GHOSTFACE KILLAH. That shouldn't be hard, since they are labelmates. Then I would have Nas make a his most personal album of his career…an album that's as close to a Hip-Hop version of Marvin Gaye's HERE MY DEAR as possible. As you recall, in a move that surprised no one, Kelis divorced Nas and is out to get all his cash. This is where Nas would let out all his feeling on the matter. And since Ghost is a MASTER at making songs like this, the combo couldn't be more perfect!
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MUSICAL OUTRO
When people think "Contemporary Jazz" they usually think of that sleepy, Kenny G shit. Me? I think of THIS! Tom Browne and his army of singers & musicians brought it back in the day.
