The second album by A Tribe Called Quest sees the departure of Jarobi White, who leaves the group during the recording of the album. The disk soon became a kind of solo album by Phife Dawg, who asked for and obtained more space on this album than Q-Tip, who had dominated the debut and here he's basically relegated to acting only on the hooks.
The first two cuts of the project are excellent, perhaps too much for the rest of the LP, which then falls inexorably. The production is among the best of the year, perhaps the best of the year, relaxing, good, it's not the pinnacle of jazz rap, but it's very close to it, everything works well here: the rhythms are all similar to each other, minimal, composed from jazzy samples, heavy bass lines, double bass, rhythmic sections and intelligent grooves a bit funky, with a hard and cold, tight drum machines, which returns a sound not as optimistic as that of the debut, but more cohesive and simple.
At this point it's all easy, just place some lyrics just decent and the result is an immediate classic, instead, the two performers of the group remained in the game, they're completely wrapped up and don't come out anymore: the album hasn't a central argument or a strong concept, but this isn't a problem, if you are a good lyricist. Unfortunately, neither Q-Tip nor Phife Dawg have ever been: like their Native Tongues friends of De La Soul, they too want to definitively abandon their hippie roots which, like the other group, have allowed them to rise above all the other contenders in the game and has to be elected as pioneers of alternative rap and as a bright and illuminating future of the genre.
However, to do this, you need to change themes and necessarily get closer to hardcore and gangsta: A Tribe Called Quest does it, but it does it with fear, like De La Soul, and both inevitably fall with their respective sophomores. The lyrics are written for the most part by Q-Tip and, as mentioned before, recited for the most part by Phife: the lyricism is mainly low-level, the lyrics should be socio-conscious, mature and fun, instead they are trivially mediocre, there are decent word games, some social commentary, braggadocio, relationships, a little humor, some positive lines, other abstract, extravagant and meaningless ones, but also unjustifiable misogyny here ("Butter", "The Infamous Date Rape").
Their bars are stupid, silly, light-hearted and effortless, simple lines, never complex or deep, delivered with a simplistic rapping style performed with a elementary technique, the two performers are simply decent and technically they're two mediocre guys, lacking in imagination and without presence on the mic, nevertheless they manage to exchange flowing verses with a fluid style and a decent flow, but without energy, with a lazy delivery. This effort is the prelude to the mumble rap so loved by children in the two thousand ten years: many fillers, among the worst there's the one on rape ("The Infamous Date Rape"), a very badly made choice that kills the whole project, leaving out all the other useless and meaningless tracks that you couldn't expect from this group or from a group that brings you into a music so fantastically made and which, predictably, has clouded most of the listeners by diverting them from the lyrical part of the project. On the sidelines, the Leaders of the New School are the guests of the final song, vitalized by a crazy performance by Busta Rhymes.
For the record, the album is hailed as an alternative hip-hop classic, one of the most influential and one of the best hip-hop projects ever, The Source friends give another five mics after the debut — gone down in history as the first given by the specialized magazine — and the criticism is on their side, however the disc struggles to move forward in the charts. It's a bit unusual for the period, the album isn't much better than the debut in the American charts, and it's worse in the UK, barely reaching the gold record (platinum in 1995; while the debut will arrive at the gold in 1996), how is this possible? I think Jive didn't promote the album too much. The label, in fact, saves A Tribe Called Quest and their immaculate legacy, managing to spare us an annoying ultra-homophobic cut that would have completely destroyed the group's reputation also due to the verses of the guests Brand Nubian: the verses are removed and the song is redone in "Show Business", Puba gets pissed off and decides not to go back and rewrite his verse and the boys call Diamond D instead.
To thank their label for saving their album, their career, their legacy, allowing everyone to still name A Tribe Called Quest as one of the best hip-hop groups of the nineties, and consequently of history, the boys repay their executives with a huge middle finger to Jive Records itself. The label saves the group from homophobia, but cannot save it from misogyny, never necessary in a hip-hop album that should be socio-conscious / alternative. The group wanted to move towards the gangsta trend and to do so they had to take elements of that subgenre, unfortunately here they take the wrong elements. These are missteps for which it's not possible to consider it a masterpiece, despite the production, I repeat, excellent jazzy production. Recommended for fans of jazz rap, this is one of the best sound documents of the genre, if you don't listen to the lyrics it's dope.
Rating: 8/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment