CD Odyssey Disc 1817: EPMD

I was planning to finish listening to this next record on a recent business trip, but the plane turned out to be rather loud (and I sat beside the engine) so had to finish things up when I got home. A full listen now under my belt, let’s get to it with another return to early nineties rap/hip hop.

Disc 1817 is…Business as Usual

Artist: EPMD

Year of Release: 1990

What’s up with the Cover? EPMD step into an alley full of cops, who look armed to the teeth with guns, dogs, and bad intentions.

How will our intrepid duo fare with only their fisherman hats to protect them? Well, that and the greatest most powerful weapon humans ever invented – words.

How I Came To Know It: Originally, I knew this band through my friend Spence but this album was just me out exploring their discography and seeing what I liked.

How It Stacks Up: I have three EPMD albums. They are all great, but one has to be last and this is it. Or, put more positively, in third place.

Ratings: 4 stars

The late eighties and early nineties are called rap’s golden age for a reason – it was a time of unparallelled creativity as artists were free to explore samples, concepts and beats as they discovered and defined a new musical landscape. There are plenty of fine hip hop acts around today (P.O.S., Run the Jewels, Dessa, Doechii) but 1990 had great acts emerging by the bucket(hat) load.

Enter EPMD’s third record, “Business as Usual,” which is the third of three definitely great records by emcees Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith. Sermon and Smith have the three ingredients needed for emcee greatness: 1) individual talent 2) vocal styles that are different but complementary and 3) dope beats. As ever Parrish provides the furious front-end controlled aggression chop, and Sermon counters with a chill bean-bag feel of a rap; comfy, cool and chill as hell.

While there are places on “Business as Usual” that are a bit overdone (and a suspicious amount of “jazz” sounds), on the whole these key ingredients are intact and well. The boys are back for a third time, and cool as ever.

Things get off to a great start with “I’m Mad” and a sampled high piano key (source – not to be revealed, yo) that gives a frantic emotional quality to the song, as we are treated to emcees that aren’t just going to dismantle you with rhymes, but that are going to do it with a frenetic aggression.

The duo know artfully flip between this front-of-beat attack style with a laid back jazz feel on “Hardcore” that rides the rhymes at the back end like a biker on a Harley Fat Boy going through a school zone; taking things slow so everyone can hear how cool things sound. Also for safety – no reason to risk injuring a kid with a rushed rhyme, people!

The album’s standout is “Rampage” which has the funkiest beats on the record, and an angry “I out rap you” ethos. Not content with the talents of EPMD, “Rampage” throws in a whole stanza courtesy of LL Cool J, channeling a “Jinglin’ Baby” vibe but even…LL cooler. Best Cool J moment:

“The ripper, the master, the overlordian
Playing MCs like an old accordion”

I don’t know if I’d risk ‘overlordian’ in a Scrabble game, but conversion of a basic title that connotes authority earned to a deeper “born with it” quality (overlord – overlordian) all to set up a clever bit of tempo and rhyme is sneaky smart stuff. My English degree approves.

As with previous records, EPMD songs feature a fairly significant number of references to the ‘bozak’, either from the perspective of “get off my bozak” or the aggressive grabbing of one’s own bozak. I don’t know another rap act that is as ‘bozak’ heavy as EPMD but it all feels very natural in their…er…hands.

My only minor criticism of “Business as Usual” is that it fades a little bit near the end, with the best of the best at the front of the record. This created a bit of trailing off of my enthusiasm as I went, but not so much to deny this golden age masterpiece it’s well-earned four stars.

Best tracks: I’m Mad, Rampage, Manslaughter, Give the People, Brothers on My Jock

CD Odyssey Disc 763: LL Cool J

I had a crazy weekend with Sheila out of town, getting up to all the silliness I used to get up to as a single guy.

OK, not all the silliness but I did waste a whole evening playing video games and another whole evening out clubbing with friends which is pretty much the alpha and omega of single life. For all the fun I had, the best part was Sunday afternoon when Sheila got home.

Disc 763 is….Phenomenon

Artist: LL Cool J

Year of Release: 1997

What’s up with the Cover? LL Cool J is not on this cover. He has been abducted by aliens, as you can see from the flare of their retreating spacecraft in the night sky. The aliens have abducted one of earth’s pioneer rappers but they have left behind a futuristic font for the betterment of mankind. At least until the nineties end and we realize it wasn’t that great of a font after all.

How I Came To Know It: I only bought this album a few months ago. I’ve been digging through LL Cool J’s back catalogue and this was my latest foray. I picked it because I remember really liking the title track back in the day.

How It Stacks Up: I have three of LL Cool J’s studio albums. Sadly, I must put “Phenomenon” at the bottom of that list. Such is life.

Ratings: 2 stars

LL Cool J is the rap master of the sexy groove, but to have true staying power, an album has to have more than a sexy groove.

For the most part, “Phenomenon” has a great feel as an album, with a lot of backbone-slidin’ beats that are delightfully just on the wrong side of raunchy. Sean “Puffy” Coombs (or whatever he’s called now) helped produce the record and gives it a smooth sound with just a hint of jazz that is generally a good match for LL Cool J’s chill rap style.

The title track has a hook that is irresistible. Listening to it you are certain that you are also “something like a phenomenon”, rather than just another schmuck with a set of headphones bobbing his head while waiting for a light to change.

Unfortunately, most of the album doesn’t live up to this song. There are a lot of guest rappers, but unlike on, say, a Gang Starr album, I found the multitude of voices distracting. Some I found downright boring to listen to, and the songs only picked up when Cool J cut in to rescue them.

Even then the album suffers the fate of a lot of late nineties rap, of having a dearth of samples (thanks for nothing, people who wrecked rap with sampling laws). The samples that are there just feel like empty radio pop in places, and while no one can out sex-rap LL Cool J, the album needs a bit more range.

A lot of the other songs are forgettable, like “Candy” which has saccharine rhymes like “you will always be my Candy/someday we will start a family” sung by the “high voice crooner guy” who is common on all rap albums of this era.

When Cool J goes full raunch it works better, like on “Nobody Can Freak You.” This is a song not just about sex, but rather a single sex act, described by LL Cool J as “No doubt the opposite of 96.” That is as subtle as the song gets. Still, it is delightfully wicked, and unlike a lot of modern rap songs, eminently…mutual.

Ahem

On to the rest of the album, which I found easy to listen to as background music while vacuuming my house a few weeks back, but not terribly inspiring when given a more critical listen.

“Father” is the album’s best effort to get serious; a song about an abusive father, and the son and mother that pay a terrible price to escape from under his clutches. It is a good idea and has strong writing but suffers from a bit too much production. It is a raw topic and I’d love to hear Cool J handle this song ten years earlier, with just a backbeat and a microphone.

The last song on the record is “Don’t Be Late, Don’t Come Too Soon” which is a six and a half minute monstrosity with a string section that feels like something you’d find in your grandparents records (“101 Strings plays classic booty music!”) and an annoying smooth jazz sound that drones on forever. It’s the musical equivalent of tantric sex, with no happy ending.

This isn’t a bad album, and if you just want something to dance to at a party, or something to put on after a party (ahem) then this is definitely baby-making music (note: be ready with the remote to skip “Father” as it is decidedly a mood killer). For my money there is a lot of better rap options out there, including plenty of better LL Cool J albums.

Best tracks: Phenomenon, Nobody Can Freak You

CD Odyssey Disc 596: LL Cool J

Despite having a backlog of new (to me) CDs to grok in their fullness, this weekend I went and bought four more.  As usual it was a mix of different stuff, some seventies Neil Young (American Stars N’ Bars), the one Elton John album I still wanted (Caribou), the one Nazareth album I still wanted (Rampant) and my first ever New Pornographers album (the Challengers).

I’m looking forward to getting to know all those albums but in terms of reviewing them, I’m happy to wait for the dice gods to randomly select them for me. Here’s what they selected last.

Disc 596 is….All World

Artist: LL Cool J

Year of Release: 1996, but featuring music from 1985 to 1995

What’s up with the Cover? The ever-popular “Giant Head” cover. Proof that someone other than Gordon Lightfoot can do these.  For a guy with ten years of hits under his belt, LL Cool J looks surprisingly angry. Dude, life is good – despite that crappy show you now star in.

How I Came To Know It: I really like the song “Mama Said Knock You Out” but I wasn’t sure I loved LL Cool J enough to buy an album, even a best of.  So I asked my Mom to buy me this album for Christmas many years ago, and she did. Thanks, Mom!

How It Stacks Up:  While cleverly not referenced in the title, this is a best of; a compilation of music from LL Cool J’s first decade in the music industry.  Therefore, as per CD Odyssey rules it can’t stack up.  I do have an actual album of his that came out later, but I’ll talk about that when I roll it.

Rating:  ‘best of’ albums don’t get rated.  That would just make all the regular albums feel bad.

While I was off getting a musical education in first metal, and then Celtic folk music, LL Cool J was busy gettin’ busy becoming a founding father of the new musical style of rap, then taking that genre in entirely new directions.

In 1985, metal-heads like me were convinced this whole ‘rap thing’ was never going to go anywhere – who would want to listen to some guy talking when he should be singing? Well, rap (and later hip hop) went on to become one of the dominant forms of pop music, so the joke was on me and all the other idiots that thought all these guys did was ‘talk.’ Rap is art, and LL Cool J is one of its great early artists.

Being a retrospective of his work, “All World” shows how much LL’s music has changed over the years.  His mid-eighties start features very traditional rap songs like “I Can’t Live Without My Radio” and “I Need a Beat”, with stark beats that showcases the strength of LL Cool J’s phrasing.

I’m only beginning to understand how to play the guitar, and was recently working on coming in and out of a song on the right beat, and on the right side of that beat.  It’s harder than it sounds, but LL Cool J’s ability to do it is flawless, even while maintaining one of the smoothest flows in rap.

Frequent readers of A Creative Maelstrom will know how much I appreciate early rap, where the subject is usually some variation of “I rap better than you.” LL Cool J is great at this, and “All World” has a couple of great examples in 1987’s “I’m Bad” and 1989’s “Jack the Ripper.” One of my favourite lines is from “I’m Bad”:

“My vocal’s exact like rack and pinion in a Jag

You try to brag you get your rhymes from a grab-bag

No good scavenger catfish vulture

My tongue's a chisel in this competition sculpture.”

Simultaneously comparing his raps to precision automotive and an artist’s sculpture while basically saying his opponents are bottom-feeding, rhyme-stealing scavengers.

My favourite of his in this genre is “Mama Said Knock You Out.” It is an obvious choice, but only because it is so demonstrably awesome. This song takes all the rap prowess of earlier songs and adds a rock beat to the mix, while never losing the funk.  Quoting “Mama Said Knock You Out” is like describing a painting – something gets lost in the translation. Suffice it to say that over the last five years only one rap song has never been deleted from my MP3 player, nor ever skipped when it came on, and this is it.

In fact, the fact that he is better known overall for rap love ballads is a bit of a disappointment for me.  Songs like “Around the Way Girl” and “I Need Love” are good songs, but they have a pop sensibility that spawned a lot of later radio friendly hip hop that is my least favourite aspects of this genre. I don’t blame LL Cool J for taking the music in this way – it isn’t his fault it got bad so quickly – but neither is it what I look for when I’m listening to his music.

I prefer his love ballads to be tongue-in-cheek, sexually playful and self-consciously inappropriate. The best examples of these are “Big Ole Butt” about a philanderer who can’t resist constantly cheating because each new girl has a nicer booty than the last one. The song’s narrator holds a reprehensible viewpoint, and singularly bad judgment, but it makes for a damn funny song. A later effort, “Back Seat” about a sexual encounter in a jeep is equally fun and ridiculous. No one can turn an inappropriate comment playful like LL Cool J.  Examples include this from “Big Ole Butt”:

“I kicked the bass like an NFL punter

And scoped the booty like a big game hunter”

And this from “Back Seat”:

“As I turn the corner, starin' in your cornea

you're gettin' hornier and hornier.”

Hearing this stuff you’d be sure that LL Cool J couldn’t possibly get as much action as his music implies, but when you look as good as he does with his shirt off, anything is possible.

LL Cool J may now be busy making garbage network TV, but “All World” reminds me how important he was to an entire musical genre, well before it was being accepted by the mainstream. On that note, I did myself a disservice not noticing LL Cool J for the first ten years of his career, and I’m glad to be making up for lost time. Despite how much I enjoy “All World” I think I’ll branch out from the ‘best of’ situation I’m currently in and get some more of his original albums.  After all, as Cool J himself reminds us in “Mama Said Knock You Out”:

 “Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years.”

Best tracks: I’m Bad, Going Back To Cali, Jack The Ripper, Big Ole Butt, Mama Said Knock You Out, Back Seat