RAEKOWN: ONLY BUILT FOR CUBAN LINKS II - MY REVIEW

RAEKWON THE CHEF
ONLY BUILT FOR CUBAN LINKS PART 2
EMI, ICEWATER RECORDS

I’ll be the first to admit that the last few Wu-Tang related projects have left me kind of cold. Cold enough that when I was asked to review “Only Built For Cuban Links II” from original Wu-Tang member Raekown The Chef I was less than thrilled. The first Cuban Links is a classic Hip Hop album and easily one of the best of the solo Wu-Tang efforts. I fired up Cuban Links II and by the second song I was aware that this album was going to be a return to form from The Chef. For lack of a better term the recipe was right for Raekwon’s come back.

Raekwon doesn’t so much spit rhymes as he does sputter them. It’s as if the words formulate in his mind so quickly that his mouth can’t say them fast enough. Every verse feels like it’s about to fall apart as if at any moment Raekwon will blow it, throw down the mic and storm off. Instead each word seems to find a way to stay connected and that constant hyperbole rhyme style is what has separated him from his fellow Wu-Tang members. This isn’t the razor sharp delivery of Rza nor the laid back bong flow of Method Man, Raekown is a completely different beast and Cuban Links II captures that perfectly.

To put it in recipe form the Cuban Links II builds a hearty broth from basic but well orchestrated beats and then piles in the seasonings for flavor. Keyboards, sirens, guitars, bass, kung fu movie samples, all of it is poured into a pot and blended to perfection. With a basis like that it doesn’t take much for Raekwon to just sputter his rhymes out until he’s spent. Everything on this album has a certain punk rock desperation, a chaotic energy that’s strongly lacking in Hip Hop today.

The first real track on the album “House Of The Flying Daggers” wraps a hard and steady beat around a keyboard line that feel like it’s coming after you. From that type of tension the album slows down and gets almost creepy with the track “Sonny’s Missing”. What makes Cuban Links II so good is that it moves between peeks and valleys musically but never loses the ability to get your head bopping back and forth.

The album is strife with special guests as well, each adding their unique style to music that’s very much Raekwon. Too often when guests hit a record the music is changed up to fit their style. Raekwon has no time for that, he’s the chef, it’s his house and either rhyme with that or get the f**k out. Whether alongside his fellow Wu-Tang members, Beanie Siegel, Lyfe Jennings or Jadakiss everybody on this album has to push their flow a little harder to mix with the music.

Rza and Inspectah Deck do some of their best work in recent years on the track “Black Mozart”, one of my personal favorites. I’m also a sucker for any record with Slick Rick on it so when I stumbled on “We Will Rob You” and heard Slick singing the title to the tune of We Will Rock You by Queen I was totally signed up.

It’s hard to pick out all the great songs on this album mostly because they work so well as one solid piece of music. Cuban Links II is a true Hip Hop album, a creative triumph coming from a genre that mostly spits out boring pop hits. This is a grimy record that’s meant to be played in the street by the fans of Hip Hop who wait desperately for a change in what’s out there.

With Cuban Links II Raekown has managed to wring out what’s going on inside his brain and sift it through several producers including Rza, Marley Marl, J Dilla, Dr Dre and more. The result is an album that can stand proud with any of the other Wu-Tang offerings. If more albums come out like Cuban Links II we’ll all start to hear the faint heart beat of true Hip Hop beginning to get stronger.

JAY Z: THE BLUEPRINT - MY REVIEW

JAY Z
THE BLUEPRINT 3
ROC NATION/ATLANTIC

When you announce in your very first song that you’re part of why Barack Obama got elected to the White House it may be time to review the size of your skull and ego. Jay-Z is so preoccupied telling people what he has, who he is and what he owns that he forgot to make a good record. The Blueprint 3 should’ve been titled The Blueprint For Failure because it fails across the board with few exceptions.

For all his Hustler bravado this is essentially a pop record, an easily digestible radio friendly boring as all hell pop record. I don’t know what happened to the Vol 2 Jigga but he’s not here, not on this album.

In all my years of reviewing records I’ve seldom come across a worse opening track than “What We Talkin’ About”. Combine a lame roller rink “couples only” eighties song with Jay-Z bragging about how great he is and you might be able to conceive of how boring this song is. The album doesn’t really get much better after that, sticking mostly with paint-by-numbers bragging sessions over beats that feel like Jay-Z went to the “beat store” and bought only from the discount section.

According to Jay Z he is now the new Frank Sinatra because he’s rich, still runs with thugs and yet rubs elbows with big time celebrities. Listening to the sheer laziness of the lyrics on Blueprint 3 I can only assume he means Sinatra when he was old, cranky and forgetting songs on stage. The music here is not just sloppy it’s lazy, as if Jay Z decided to throw in everything but the kitchen sink without any plan to connect the dots.

I’m assuming part of the problem is that the king of self-delusion Kanye West, a man who asked to be called the new King Of Pop before Michael Jackson’s body was even cold, produced a large part of The Blueprint 3. You can just picture Jay Z and West listening to this album and telling each other how great they are while everybody else stands around scratching their heads.

Blueprint 3 isn’t a total loss. Songs like “Empire State Of Mind” or “Venus Vs Mars” remind us of how good Jay Z can be when he really tries and isn’t produced by Kanye. For the most part Jay Z doesn’t accomplish much on The Blueprint 3 other than to prove he’s lost his edge. The sly sense of humor and swagger is gone replaced by full blown ego.

I sat listening to the Blueprint 3 trying to understand how this was the same guy that wrote 99 Problems. I’m sure there are enough college kids who want to be “down” with Hip Hop to make Blueprint 3 a financial success but on an artistic level the once great Jay-Z has let the genre down badly.

REVIEW: EMINEM - RELAPSE

I can just hear the conversation in the studio as Dr. Dre and Eminem sat listening to “Relapse” the first studio offering from Eminem in nearly five years. I can hear them both talking about how this record was offensive, raunchy, totally fucked up and insane.
The problem is they forgot to make it good.

Eminem was once seen as the ultimate rap lyricist, a man with a razor sharp wit combined with an amazing ability to pour his soul out for everybody to see. After listening to Relapse and remembering the previous album Encore I can honestly say that man is long gone. Relapse is a boring, predictable and largely phoned in album that hits all the major points that make Eminem “controversial” without any creativity behind them at all.

What always made Eminem’s controversy so sincere was that he didn’t force it, he was honest and people had a visceral reaction to what he was saying. With Relapse that kind of honesty is gone replaced with standard “look at me I’m being crazy” lines. Eminem attacks Christopher Reeve, Kim Karadashian, Sarah Palin and pretty much any easy pop culture target he can find. It feels like he just flipped through celebrity magazines and then wrote rhymes about them that he thought would make people angry. Halfway through it Relapse starts to feel like a desperate attempt by Eminem to not be forgotten or reclaim his lost glory. He fails on both counts.

Musically this album sucks big asshole. Rumor has it the actual beat makers in Dr. Dre’s stable quit on him and based on this record could see that being true. The entire album sounds like one long song cut into 20 or more parts. Literally the beat is the same, the chorus the same, even the bits and pieces of sounds are all from the same sample bank. I could walk into a music school, spit and hit twenty kids that could write better tracks than this.

Then there’s Eminem’s voice, which he’s decided to make “funny” and “crazy” for every goddamn fucking song. Each time Eminem opens his mouth it sounds like he’s channeling an Adam Sandler “funny voice” ala The Waterboy or Billy Madison then mixing it with Apu from The Simpsons. I can see what he’s trying to do but sadly the attempt fails miserably.

Everything here is forced from the obligated lyrics about slapping bitches, torturing women, how he’s like a serial killer, to the pot shots at celebrities that aren’t even funny. I’ll admit the single “We Made You” is catchy and fun; it’s also the best song on the entire record. Think about that for a second then go back and listen to the single again. Yep, that’s the best Eminem and Dr. Dre could do this time. Sad isn’t it?
I can only guess that after getting famous by being honest and truly creative Eminem decided he wasn’t “street” enough and started hanging out with his boys in D-12 (who suuuuck). Being around that many marginal rappers must’ve worn off on old Slim Shady because Relapse sounds more like a failed demo than a triumphant return to form.

Eminem said he was coming back to take music over because what was going on in hip-hop sucked. While I agree with his opinion he isn’t going to take anything back with this horribly desperate mess of an album. Based on what I’ve heard here both musically and lyrically I think Eminem and Dre should’ve called it Tombstone instead of Relapse.