Keeping Up With the Joneses

M
U
S
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New Life State of Mind:
When it comes to street
poetry, the future Mr. Kelis
seems otherwise engaged.
Keeping Up With
the Joneses
By Sarah Godfrey
Street’s Disciple
Nas
Sony Urban/Columbia
N
o matter what brilliant permutations may be in store for
post–“Hey Ya!” hiphop, it’s
hard to imagine much that could
measure up to the beautiful hell that
Nas made of mid-’90s New York.
From the suicidal tendencies of Biggie to the Shaolin escapism of the
Wu-Tang Clan, the music of hiphop’s
most recent golden era was rich with
different interpretations of what it
meant to be young, drifting, and black
in the dystopia of the Rotten Apple.
But of all of the fine product created,
Nas’ 1994 debut, Illmatic, was the
best of the best.
One of the most celebrated
albums in the history of hiphop, Illmatic seemed less a collection of songs
than a near-cinematic rendering of
life in the Queensbridge projects. By
pairing Nas’ grimy, hyperrealistic
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38
lyrics with production work by the
likes of DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and
Q-Tip, the album managed to transport outsiders to an world where “all
the old folks pray to Jesús,” “that
buck that bought a bottle could’ve
struck the lotto,” and “each block is
like a maze/Full of black rats
trapped” without losing one shred of
hard-core credibility.
But when the industry began to
shift from melancholy to celebratory
a few years later, it seemed as if Nasir
Jones couldn’t handle the change.
Other artists figured out how to successfully transfer skills honed in
hard-core, making the spending of
money sound just as good as the
street-level quest to obtain it. But
not Nas: Without Illmatic’s five-mike
Source rating to fall back on, his
career probably wouldn’t have survived all those throwaway singles and
alter egos.
After a decade of growing pains,
though, Nas again has a solid idea of
who he is—or at least who he wants to
be. Save for the brief relapse that was
his 2001 beef with Jay-Z, the 31year-old rapper has rid himself of
much of the venom that was once his
trademark. He’s distanced himself
from the quarrels of the QB, is getting married to “Milkshake” minx
Kelis, and has basically left the days of
drinking Moët with Medusa behind
him. His latest, the 25-track, doubledisc Street’s Disciple, explores the
adult themes of shifting priorities,
the importance of family, and the
error of one’s youthful ways. Maturity, however, seems to have come at
the expense of eloquence.
In the past, Nas assumed that listeners didn’t know about the struggles explored in his music. As a result,
he tried that much harder to make
them come alive. But on Disciple, it’s
as if he thinks that because everyone
is familiar with the white-picket
fence, 2.5-kids ideal, he doesn’t have
to explain what it really means for
him. Other MCs have built entire
careers around extolling the virtues of
putting away childish things, but
when Nas talks about how his entire
life has changed, his rhymes don’t
reflect similar progress.
With a clunky track and leaden
rhymes, “Getting Married” finds Nas
at his least evocative. Indeed, rhymes
about riding in a limo to church and
watching his bride walk down the
aisle are as dryly worded as an Emily
Post–approved wedding announcement: “Headed to the chapel, my niggas laughin’, and it’s baffling/’Cause
just a year ago, it’s weird though, I
knew I’d get married.” Nas used to
temper such sentiments with a little
bit of salt, but here he’s all sugar.
Even that part about how “the hos
gonna miss me” comes off as treacly.
Equally disappointing is “War,”
with its shiny, easy-listening track
and misleading title. The song is
ostensibly about the fight to stay cool
when surrounded by stress, but Nas
quickly loses that theme and falls
into more talk of the two ladies in his
life—his fiancée and his daughter.
And instead of discussing how their
love and support help him weather
the problems of the world, he just
gushes. “Got a office on Broadway,
business in Jamaica/Tell my daughter try the hardest so the best
schools’ll take her,” he rhymes. “And
I’m late to a date with my wife, I
realize/I stop to shop, had to get her
some type surprise.”
This over-the-top softheartedness
is hard to swallow, but it’s not as badtasting as Nas’ attempts to deliver
raunchy material with the holierthan-thou hindsight of a reformed
man. Even on “Remember the
Times,” a kinky history of the
numerous notches on his bedpost,
Nas presents himself as a pitchman
for the family-values set. The song
itself is preceded by an intro in which
Kelis playfully asks her man which
woman from his past he would bed
one last time before their nuptials—a
setup leads into a long review of his
conquests over, appropriately enough,
a pimped-out ’70s beat. Sure, the
horn- and string-laden track is
appealing enough, but something
about hearing a guy extol the joys of
monogamy while simultaneously flipping through a sexual scrapbook that
includes one woman who “used to try
to eat my excrement” and two who
“sucked juice out my urethra” just
doesn’t sit well.
To be fair, the project isn’t this
horrible throughout. It’s not as if Nas
had lost his ability to deliver a powerful pun or rhyme on beat, and Disciple’s various producers—longtime
collaborators L.E.S., Salaam Remi,
and Chucky Thompson, plus a couple
of guests—pull some appropriately
old-school samples from the crates:
George Clinton, Lyn Collins, Barry
White. Nas also has plenty of pentup political rage that he’s all too
happy to unleash, dropping bombs on
everyone from the black actors of WB
and UPN sitcoms to, of course,
George W. Bush.
On the Q-Tip-produced tirade
“American Way,” Nas even manages
to bring Kelis into the studio with
some amount of success. “Yeah, I
think about this every day/That’s the
American way,” she deadpans infectiously on the song’s seesawing hook.
“Shit.” Elsewhere, the rallying
lyrics—“Who you gonna elect, Satan
or Satan?/In the ’hood, nothin’ is
changin’ ”—prove that Nas has
indeed changed and grown, and here
he’s not artlessly ramming that fact
down listeners’ throats.
“A Message to the Feds, Sincerely,
We the People” and “These Are Our
Heroes” similarly provide welcome
respite from tepid rhymes about Nas’
personal life. In fact, any song that
puts the MC’s gilded tongue and
quick wit before his professed maturity succeeds. “Thief’s Theme,” the
dark first single, samples Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,” and is
told mostly in the present tense—
although Nas does sneak in the fact
that he’s “speakin’ on my old life.” “I
take summers off, ’cause I love winter
beef/Started ’87, with the shotty in the
sheep/Three-quarter-length beige,
dressed to kill,” he raps, finally delivering the almost obsessive level of
detail he’s celebrated for. “Bust a shell
at the ground, pellets hit the crowd/
Nobody like a snitch, everybody shut
they mouth/Woolrich, Carhartt, gunpowder stains/Smellin’ like trees, sinsemill’ on the brain.”
In these familiar surroundings—
haunting music and discomfiting lyrical content—Nas’ growth as an artist
is on full display. He’s not talking
about improving with age, but the
quality of the material lets us know
that he has. Also notable is “U.B.R.
( U n a u t h o r i z e d B i o g r a p hy o f
Rakim),” an homage to another
Queens native who “invented a new
sound.” The execution is a little
shaky—it’s hard to squeeze someone’s entire glorious career into a 3
minutes and 38 seconds—but the idea
is so brilliant that is makes up for a
multitude of sins. Over a sparse beat
that has a steady synthesized hand
clap as its predominant feature, Nas
simply presents a time line of his
hero’s life (“First million-dollar deal
ever in rap/18th Letter did that”),
preaching to the kiddies in a way far
preferable that of his sappy, youthgeared 2002 hit, “I Can.”
To take a break from talking
about one’s own life and views to
focus on another rapper is about as
selfless as it gets in mainstream
hiphop, and it’s the most enjoyable
grown-man moment on Street’s Disciple’s whole 88 minutes. But for Nas
to keep his music on a pace with the
strides he’s made on the personal
front, he might do well to take a
good, hard look at himself. He’s got
to study his own impeccable sense of
scene in order to make his family
portraiture as interesting as the tales
of victims-cum-criminals that he
once spun. No one should begrudge
Nas the settled-down life. But until
he can figure out how to get the joy
he’s obviously experiencing to jump
off a record, no one should really be
listening to him, either.
CP
Washington City Paper January 7, 2005 39
39
M
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Incorrect Change
By Sarah Godfrey
The Massacre
Money Shot:
50 aims low.
50 Cent
Shady/Aftermath/Interscope
T
he overexposure of 50 Cent
isn’t all bad news. To help
plug his new album The Massacre, the Queens native recently
hosted MTV Jams for an entire weekend, during which he picked out his
favorite videos for airing. As is to be
expected, most of his selections were
his own material. One pick, “Life’s on
the Line,” seemed far more interesting, mysterious, and genuine than
anyone has a right to expect from the
man born Curtis Jackson. The 1999
song is street-grimy for sure, but it
seeks to examine, rather than glorify,
hiphop’s obsession with drugs, sex,
and guns. In the low-budget vid, 50
chastises rappers who “escape reality
when they rhyme,” bragging about
the nonexistent weight they hold and
cars they drive.
This is 50 at his finest, speaking to
the violence and thug currency that
he’s fascinated by and adding just a bit
of cultural criticism. Much more
often, he simply holds a mirror up to
our expectations of the Man Who
Was Shot Nine Times: We don’t care
what he has to say about life on the
streets; the mere fact that he’s survived it is enough. He’s a just-thefacts sort of MC who talks about his
bullet-pocked past and millions of
dollars with a chilly detachment that
somehow makes it all sound good—
deep, even, if you don’t listen too
carefully. His charms enable him to
dwell in a comfort zone of guns, violence, and misogyny without ever
having to explore how he got there or
why he remains.
Hiphop rewards thoughtful gangsters—stupid ones may enjoy shortlived fame, but rarely are they awarded sustainable credibility. If 50 is able
to retain his lock on the game simply
by talking loud and saying nothing, it
will mark a huge shift in the genre.
That the new album, The Massacre,
sold 1.14 million copies in its first
four days of release suggests the shift
may be happening already. The disc,
the eagerly anticipated follow-up to
2003’s multiplatinum Get Rich or Die
Tryin’, is to 50 what Niggaz4Life was
to N.W.A.: a complete departure
from thought-provoking gangsterism. Shallow shoot-’em-up albums
aren’t new, of course, but the absence
of any sort of political statement or
larger look at society on a hard-core
album usually signals the beginning
of the end.
“In My Hood,” produced by C
Styles, is 50 at his most matter-offact. The track is filled with the horns
and piano chords that New York
hiphop had a long love affair with
during the ’90s, but it has enough
synth to give it a little West Coast flavor—it’s the exact sort of bicoastal
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tinkering that made Get Rich a smash.
Here 50 tries to take us to Jamaica—
Queens, that is—through some simple, carefully chosen imagery:
“Shorty down there on that Queens
track, takin’ a whippin’/Shit, bitch
get outta pocket, she need some discipline,” he rhymes. “Peep the fiend
shootin’ diesel in his arm in the
alley/Look at the chrome spinners
spinnin’ on that black Denali.”
Sure, he’s showing rather than
telling, but he takes it too far. While
trying to take listeners on a guided
tour of his home turf, he leaves them
to gaze out of their windows without
explaining the sights, without giving
up one word about how these things
are relevant to his life or the world as
a whole. The scariest thing about the
track isn’t its depiction of violence
but the fact that its creator has managed to make a completely infectious
song completely devoid of any other
redeeming quality.
And The Massacre is undoubtedly
an addictive listen. The album shows
off a roster of rookie and seasoned
producers, catchy hooks, and, most of
all, 50’s beautiful voice. Whether he’s
singing or rhyming, his raspy tone
has a hypnotic quality that lulls the
listener through soulless lines about
fucking women, firing pistols, and
selling drugs. “I’m Supposed to Die
Tonight,” for example, is classic
superficial 50: He taps Eminem to
lay down one of his usual dark, creepy
tracks; the title holds promise of a
paranoid, prophetic masterpiece that
remains undelivered. Instead, we get
a proud declaration of shallowness:
“In 2002, if you asked me to make a
wish/I simply woulda wished that my
music would be a hit/Big said,
‘Damn, niggas wanna stick me for
my paper’ then ‘Pray for my downfall’/I understand it all/But me—I’m
a lil’ more flashy a nigga/So chances
are, I’m-a have ta blast me a nigga.”
“Piggy Bank,” the battle track
everyone is talking about because of
its slander of Nas, Jadakiss, and Fat
Joe, is similar—inflammatory on first
listen, profoundly noncontroversial
on the inevitable next. Aside from
New York producer Needlz’s cleverly syncopated coin-dropping
rhythm, it’s just more of 50 talking
about how strapped and hard he is
and how much money he makes.
Addressing Jada, he says, “Homey, in
N e w Yo rk , n i g g a s l i k e y o u r
vocals/But that’s only New York,
dawg/Your ass is local.” He insults
other rappers in a similar fashion,
but he never once professes to be a
better lyricist than any of his targets.
He makes more money than the men
he picks on, and his face is on more
posters and store displays, but he
knows not to put his mike-slinging
talent up against theirs. More important, he doesn’t have to: His power
comes from persuasion, not skill.
That power is truly tested with
“Get in My Car”—only a true
manipulator could get people to cop
to liking a hook such as “I got no
pickup lines/I stay on da grind/I tell
the hoes all the time/Bitch get in my
car.” Amazingly, 50’s nonchalant
delivery almost makes the song as
tight as he thinks it is, and producer
Hi-Tek picks up the rest of the slack.
The twangy guitar and soulful bass
line the Rawkus track master throws
at this clunker are the only things
that move it beyond being a nastier
reprisal of “P.I.M.P.”
Chart-topping single “Candy
Shop” is more predictable, sugary
smut, but it’s enticing. And since it’s
being pumped by every club and
radio station on the planet, it’s much
easier to submit to its charms than
pick apart its weaknesses. True, it’s a
knockoff of “Magic Stick,” and
Olivia, G-Unit’s first R&B diva, is a
less able partner for 50 than Lil’ Kim,
yet it has that fierce Bollywood beat
and provides a break from the murder
music that makes up most of the
album: Em collab “Gatman and Robbin,” “Ski Mask Way,” “Gunz Come
Out,” and so on.
There are a couple of tiny
moments of false clarity and honesty
on the album, which are heartening
only because they signal that 50
knows he should at least attempt
them. On “God Gave Me Style,” the
rapper tries to wear his heart on his
sleeve by talking about how grateful
he is to have traded his triple-beam
for a microphone and how he feels
alone even when he’s surrounded by
friends. But the sentiments are so
clichéd that it’s hard to view them as
genuine. And the album’s alleged love
songs, “So Amazing” and “Build You
Up,” can be dismissed as the silky
gamesmanship of a skilled pimp.
But The Massacre does have one
moment of genuine profundity that
appears to have slipped in under the
radar. On “A Baltimore Love Thing,”
50 plays the part of heroin, enticing a
junkie to cook him up and shoot him
into her veins. The idea isn’t a new
one, but 50’s version plays the
metaphorical similarities between
unhealthy personal relationships and
drug addiction for all they’re worth.
“Now you tryin’ ta leave me/You’ll
never live without me/Girl, I’m
missin’ you/Come and see me
soon/Tie your arm up, put that
lighter under that spoon,” he rhymes.
“Now put that needle to your arm,
princess, stick it in/Relapse/You back
bitch, don’t ever try that again.”
He also shouts out several horseshooting celebs: Marvin Gaye, Ozzy
Osbourne, Kurt Cobain, Frankie
Lymon, and Jimi Hendrix. The move
recalls 50’s gutsy 1999 single “How to
Rob,” on which he comedically imagined which rappers would be soft
enough to mug—a neat puncturing of
gangster theatricality. Here, the target
is the very same fame-fueled world
the MC invokes reflexively almost
everywhere else on The Massacre: “I
be with rock stars, see you lucky I’m
fuckin’ with you.” The lyrics are tied
together nicely by an appropriate soul
sample—a snippet of the Dells’ “I’ll
Be Waiting There for You.” The
entire track is hot, right down to the
line in which 50 begs, “Promise me
you’ll come and see me/Even if it
means you have to sell your mama’s
TV.” Coming from a guy who now
lives and dies by the idiot box, that’s
a powerful statement indeed.
CP
M
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The Way of the West:
Kanye finds direction.
Principle
Playa
By Sarah Godfrey
Late Registration
Kanye West
Roc-A-Fella
K
anye West’s rise to fame had all
the makings of a modern fairy
tale—call it “The Emperor’s
New Flow.” When the superstar producer began rhyming, back in 2003,
he labeled anyone who failed to recognize his genius an enemy of hiphop.
His relentless propaganda campaign
worked: Few questioned the skill of
the Roc-A-Fella–backed artist, and
the next thing you know, he was all
over the place—shows, videos,
radio—with people everywhere
buzzing about his poetic prowess.
Eventually, a contingent emerged
that had the guts to say the man can’t
rap, but even it had to acknowledge
that West’s production work covered
a multitude of lyrical sins—even lines
as horrible as “I’m Kan, the Louis
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Vuitton Don/Bought my mom a
purse, now she Louis Vuitton Mom,”
from the 28-year-old Chicagoan’s
debut LP, 2004’s The College Dropout.
Besides, it’s not as if he was the first
lyrically deficient producer-turnedrapper the world had ever seen. In
fact, when he first emerged, West
looked a lot like Puff Daddy. There
was the initial dependence on a bigger, brighter star; fascination with
fashion and jewelry; and, of course,
the overconfidence in his abilities.
Dropout was even West’s very own
No Way Out: wack rhymes saved by
interesting production. West isn’t the
first to do the whole soul-sample-onspeed thing, but he certainly helped
bring it to prominence and, now,
prevalence. The beats, along with his
exploration of the sort of middleclass themes—pop culture! disillusionment with higher education!—
that music critics could relate to,
earned most of the praise for his first
solo effort. The new Late Registration,
however, is a different story. West is
less like Diddy and more like
reserved, brilliant producer/rapper
Dr. Dre. Like Dre’s groundbreaking
1992 album, The Chronic, Registration
not only is sonically innovative but
also includes solid lyrics from guests
and adequate verses from West.
Those who blasted West’s rhyme
skills will find him much improved.
On “Touch the Sky,” a song about his
professional and personal struggles
built around a horn-saturated Curtis
Mayfield sample, West drops this little gem: “Back when they thought
pink polos would hurt the Roc/Before
Cam’ got the shit to pop/The doors
was closed/I felt like Bad Boy’s street
team—I couldn’t work the Lox.”
OK, he’s still no Rakim, but he has
gotten better—and better still, his
newfound talent hasn’t gone to his
head. West doesn’t show off his
wordplay at every opportunity; he
slips it in where appropriate. Registration is the work of a man who’s
finally realized that just because it’s
his album doesn’t mean he has to
mark his musical territory by pissing
all over it. Kanye has had a wonderful
epiphany: Less of him is more.
Dropout explored education, religion, and death, but it was all about
(continued on page 44)
Washington City Paper September 16, 2005 43
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(continued from page 43)
how the world affected West. Social
issues were relevant only when they
gave him an excuse to brag about
breaking the commercial-hiphop
mold. He rapped about shunning college because he knew it would push
buttons; he rapped about Jesus
because no mainstream rapper had
done it well before; he rapped about
his insecurities and then patted himself on the back for being “the first to
admit” them. If West went beyond
generic hiphop boasts, he did so only
to reach a new level of narcissistic
navel-gazing.
Hiphop braggadocio is interesting—and tolerable—only when it’s
used as a small, sad way for the disenfranchised to grab at dignity: king-ofthe-block claims tempered by the
diminutive size of the kingdom, for
example. West never had that sort of
poignancy behind his boasts—he was
just a kid with a relative wealth of
opportunities who worked hard and
became a superstar. But he’s slowly
opening his eyes to the woes of others, gradually adopting a view of the
world that extends beyond his nose.
He’s on TV saying, “George Bush
doesn’t care about black people.”
He’s speaking out against “conflict
diamonds” in a re-recording of Registration’s first single, “Diamonds
From Sierra Leone.” Up there on the
rickety stage of megacelebrity, he’s
becoming politicized—and unlike,
say, Sean Penn, he seems just as surprised by it as the rest of us.
He can still be an asshole, for sure.
“Bring Me Down,” featuring Brandy,
is all about people trying to forsake
him like Christ or something, and
“Addiction” is a self-indulgent piece
on which he congratulates himself for
fessing up to his vices. But counter
those with “Roses,” a song about how
West’s sick grandmother, a dedicated
church secretary, is denied the highquality medical care available to
celebrities. “You know the best medicine go to people that’s paid/If Magic
Johnson got a cure for AIDS/And all
the broke muthafuckas passed
away/You tellin’ me if my grandma’s
in the NBA/Right now she would be
OK?” he raps over a sample from Bill
Withers’ “Rosie.” An otherworldly
electronica breakdown toward the
end of the track—most likely courtesy of Fiona Apple producer Jon
Brion—helps keep things from getting too treacly. Better yet, it’s clear
that West didn’t record the song to
vent about how much his grandmother’s illness has fucked him up or
to be a trailblazer. Instead, he’s channeled his outrage into a clear statement on how the disadvantaged are
treated in this country.
“Crack Music” also tackles tough
material with unforeseen sophistication. Over hard-hitting percussion
and a peppy “la, la, la” of a choir,
West talks about how music is the
new drug game, the new way to make
money and get out of the ghetto. It
smacks of Jay-Z’s 10-year-old “Rap
Game/Crack Game,” but instead of
just comparing the seediness of the
two industries, West suggests that
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music is the black community’s shot
at not just riches but also payback. As
the track progresses, it breaks apart
and becomes a weird tangle of sound
effects, then a sermon: “What we
gave back was crack music/And now
we ooze it/Through they nooks and
crannies/So our mommas ain’t gotta
be they cooks and nannies/And we
gon’ repo everything they ever took
from Grammy/Now the former slaves
trade hooks for Grammys.”
West’s growth is most noticeable
in content, but he’s made strides in
other areas as well. Using another
producer to enhance his sound was a
pretty humble, grown-up move. So
was bringing in a huge cast of guests
who could’ve easily shown him up,
including Nas, Common, the Game,
Paul Wall, and a slew of other serious
MCs (though not, thank god, hiphop
violinist Miri Ben-Ami). On the
“Diamonds” remix, West manages
to outshine his friend, his mentor, his
everything—Jay-Z. In terms of
rhythm and rhyme, Jay sounds better
over the Shirley Bassey sample, but
West analyzes the gem trade and all
Jay-Z can do is talk about upholding
the Roc name and address the rumors
plaguing his business empire. By rattling off the names of his artists
instead of bashing De Beers, the
mogul missed out on what could’ve
been a classic rap moment.
On “Heard ’Em Say,” by contrast,
West pretty much lets Maroon 5
frontman Adam Levine’s singing and
Brion’s strange mix of piano and
synth bass line take center stage. He’ll
occasionally drop a bomb such as “I
know the government administered
AIDS,” but he’s not jumping up and
down demanding to be heard. “Drive
Slow,” featuring Wall, has a downSouth flavor and even includes a
screwed interlude, but it’s mellowed
out with syncopated keys and the
horn section that appears on most of
Registration. Yet the track is most
notable for background vocals so soft
and airy that they sound like an
instrument themselves, a barely perceptible humming that is a long way
from the loud, distorted wailing West
once favored.
His magnum opus as a producer,
however, is “We Major,” one of the
most interesting hiphop tracks in
recent years. It features more horns,
twinkling keys, and cheesy, oversimple percussion. Together, they
become what must be the most freeflowing seven-and-a-half minutes
ever to sit at No. 1, something that
sounds like an early-’70s Stevie Wonder jamming with a junior high
school band’s drum section. Not even
a verse from the infamous Nas is a
match for the track. Just when the
music has almost faded out, West
jumps in and shouts, “Can I talk my
shit again?” He then brings the beat
back up and repeats the same line:
“Can I talk my shit again?” It’s a
move that’s out of step with most of
Late Registration, too brash and arrogant. But by the time West issues it,
he’s earned the right to talk his shit as
much as he wants.
CP