Happy Valentine’s Day! With our wedding anniversary so close to Valentine’s Day, this is one Sheila and I tend to downplay, but I can’t help but think happy thoughts about having found (as one of my friends from work c) “my human.” Thanks for giving me this wonderful life with you, darling!
Disc 1620 is…It’s a Big Daddy Thing
Artist: Big Daddy Kane
Year of Release: 1989
What’s up with the Cover? Big Daddy hosts a pool party. There does not appear to be a pool (the guests are all sitting on the back of his limousine) but everyone’s in a bathing suit, so that’s my assumption.
Kane is shirtless and showing off a gold chain so thick it’s likely to give him back trouble in later years. Big Daddy often eschews a shirt, going with robes, togas, or - as is the case here - nothing at all. It’s a big daddy thing.
How I Came To Know It: Checking out old school rappers led me naturally to Kane, and once I fell for his debut album, “Long Live the Kane” (reviewed back at Disc 1108) it was an easy descent into all his awesome stuff. “It’s a Big Daddy Thing” is just part of that journey, which continues to this day.
How It Stacks Up: I have four Big Daddy Kane albums, twice as many as when I reviewed “Long Live the Kane” and I’m still growing the collection. Of the four I have, “It’s a Big Daddy Thing” comes in at a tie for #1, but since I don’t believe in ties, I’ll reluctantly put it in at #2.
Rating: 4 stars
Big Daddy Kane is considered part of the “golden age of hip hop”. This expression feels like it is pandering; a sort of “look what the old fellers used to do.” But it isn’t just that the celebrated rhyme concentration of someone like MF Doom wouldn’t exist without predecessors like Kane. It is more than that. This isn’t just musical history – this is some dope-ass, furious spitting as good as anything before or since.
Kane doesn’t get the same cred as some other early rap artists, but in terms of the sheer saturation of language few have ever done it so good. And fortunately, this being 1989, and one of the big topics to rap about is how well one raps, we have Kane proving it in his own words. Consider this little quatrain of pain from “Mortal Combat”:
“I seize and freeze
MCs with these degrees
Put me to my knees, or at ease, chill'd please
I break it down, to bring on the next act
Rappers are so full of shit, they need ex-lax”
Now multiply the awesomeness of that by 10, and that’s what it’s like when Kane is delivering it out loud.
Kane is not alone in his brilliance, and the record features a laundry list of first-rate producers and DJs, including Marly Marl and Mister Cee among others. Kane produces half the tracks on the record on his own, and he is a natural. The samples on this record have a natural funk that makes this record not only a grab-bag of verbal delight, but a great party record as well.
This could be a dope bass line on “Smooth Operator” or a sampled horn riff on “Calling Mr. Welfare” but the choices are universally well chosen to bring the funk.
My biggest beef with this record is that it is too long. At 17 tracks and 76 minutes it is just too much – but what would I cut? Everywhere I turn there are incredible flows, rhymes, and samples. This record is saturated in excellence. What should go?
OK, one song can go. “To Be Your Man” tries to channel LL Cool J’s sensual slow jam, but it comes across as schmaltz, not sex. The chorus is an annoying earworm and the production includes a sample that sounds like a dental drill which, based on the number of times it recurs, was designed to annoy me.
However, this is the only song that annoyed me. The other 16 are various shades of great. I did not tire of this record once, and my only frustration is that I must reluctantly put it away and move on to my next random review.
Best tracks: Another Victory, Mortal Combat, Smooth Operator, Calling Mr. Welfare, Wrath of Kane (Live), I Get the Job Done, Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy, The House that Cee Built, Warm It Up Kane
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