Solo studio album number four for Leslie Pridgen aka Freeway, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pivotal rapper of State Property and what was once a veritable empire, you may remember, Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella. In fact, Freeway has engaged in several projects throughout his artistic career, and counting collaborative albums, efforts with his group, EPs and mixtapes, his catalog exceeds a dozen releases, some memorable as his unforgettable debut "Philadelphia Freeway" (2003) and as his latest winner, the Jake One-produced album "The Stimulus Package" (2010).
"Diamond in the Ruff" coincides with the emcee's first and only album with his new label, Babygrande Records. Production is realized by Jake One, Bink, Just Blaze, Needlz, DJ Khalil, Incredible Stro, Mike Jerz and Sunny Dukes. The guests are Marsha Ambrosius, Vivian Green, Suzann Christine, Nikki Jean, Miss Daja Thomas, Alonda Rich, Wale, Musiq Soulchild and Neef Buck.
The album is open by one of its finest moments, "Right Back": boom bap jazzy midtempo provided by Jake One, good chorus sung by Marsha Ambrosius, good rapping by Freeway, although the lyrics are starting to show cracks with some weak bars. The joint with Vivian Green is another winner: tight, tense, bouncy beat realized by Incredible Stro, rnb chorus by the guest, good rap by Freeway that places two rnb songs to start the disk. The whole product seems to be heading towards the top end of the Philadelphia emcee's catalog as track number three begins to play: "The Thirst" boasts an amazing production realized by Jake One, tense, somber jazzy beat, excellent aggressive delivery of Free with hook rapped by himself.
This LP starts pretty good with great jazzy vibes, R&B hooks and aggressive delivery by Freeway, but gets bogged down in the middle, when the [good] rhythms no longer come. "Wonder Tape" it's annoying, with simplistic boom bap jazzy, tight, unfit with Free delivery, with the R&B hook provided by Suzann Christine and with the background. "No Doubt", the second beat created by Mike Jerz after the previous one, it's a production more simplistic: it ruins a good aggressive delivery of Freeway. Then, Bink! comes to save the record in "Dream Big", jazzy chipmunk soul beat which takes you back to the early years of the chipmunk when Kanye was the new rap star and Just Blaze seemed destined to reach the elite of producers, with good delivery by the Philadelphia MC, but the hook and Soulchild are unfit here.
The bouncy, annoying, hardcore, bad rhythm pulled out in "Early", it's something that you can not expect it from beatmakers like Just Blaze. "Ghetto" has another bad production, bouncy, simplistic, still annoying and hardcore realized by Needlz. Neef Buck is the first rapper as guest, at track nine: despite a good, festive, cheerful delivery by Neef, even this record is ruined by a bouncy, cheap, weak boom bap, work of Sunny Dukes. Along with "Jungle", furious cut with light synths and a rare decent hardcore production, almost pomo postmodern weird for the sake of weird, realized by Incredible Stro that fully supports Freeway until the end, "True" is one of the best record in the second part of the album: with DJ Khalil, Jake One realized an excellent jazzy soulful rhythm, skeletal, vibrant, ethereal, with drum kick heavy, good delivery of Free with good spot of Wale.
The other cuts are conditioned by their rhythms, which are often poor. "Sweet Temptations" suffers from the umpteenth annoying and poor production of Mike Jerz, a nonsense deviant beat. Bink returns with one of his worst rhythms ever for "All the Hoods", a production so out of his time that it even seems avant-garde: the choice of the beatmaker is simplistic and annoying, resulting in a confusing solution that doesn't help the rapper's execution. "Hottest Akhi" almost makes you smile bitterly, because here practically the exact opposite happens compared to the previous songs: Freeway sounds well in one of the few soundscapes that fit his style, deadly and dirty, muddy and rough, but the beat isn't powerful enough to withstand the impact of his flow and collapses into the synthesized twirls on the bridge, resulting in yet another messy and chaotic track on the CD. Mike Jerz returns behind the keyboards one last time to create the beat for "Money is My Medicine": it comes out a crazy heavy boom bap that's so cumbersome it can't move, Freeway is screaming in this gibberish track, not even the synths save this thing. "Lil Mama" is the latest choice and has essential jazz vibes on which the rapper seems to be at ease.
The album is launched by two promotional singles released in fall 2011 via Rhymesayers Entertainment, "Beautiful Music" and "Escalators", both produced by Jake One and which would both be among the best tracks on this effort, from which two singles are extracted, "Jungle" and "Numbers".
"Diamond in the Ruff" enters the top 40 among rap records and gets a mixed reception from music critics, conquering only part of the reviewers and even fewer aficionados. There are several reasons why fans didn't appreciate this effort as much as the collaboration with Jake One. After a pretty solid dozen minutes, the product inexplicably collapses. The music is weak, Jake One himself doesn't sound like he did two years ago and the beats he offers here for Freeway sound like scraps, the Philadelphia rapper asked Bink if the producer was able to replicate the Just Blaze sound of early Roc-A-Fella albums, Bink replied in the affirmative, but the results are ones you can hear too. The other guys don't have many reasons to stay on such an album, if not for purely nostalgic value like Needlz, who is a past collaborator of Freeway ("Free at Last", 2007). Incredible Stro is a rare silver lining among the beatmakers on this effort, while Mike Jerz gets nearly everything wrong he touches.
Freeway has often put the lyrics in the background compared to other elements in the construction of his songs, here, unfortunately, lyricism works against him at all times: even without considering that hardcore and gangsta are repetitive sub-genres almost by definition and that you have to work hard to build two albums where somehow you don't say the same thing, here the boy is evidently uninspired, many of his verses questionable, poorly thought out, meaningless and just thrown in there. The lyrics are a problem, tired, banal and useless when not embarrassing at all.
Unlike lyricism, rapping is key to Freeway and one of the big reasons to listen to him and ignore other rappers not only from the East Coast, but also in State Property itself: the North Philly emcee still has energy and delivers well on almost every track, however, you can hear he's not comfortable with the beats these guys are providing to him, his rapping sounds forced as if he's struggling on every track and this means that his best efforts are nipped in the bud by a production that is unsuited to his style and is shoddy.
Among the happy notes there's the choice to leave most of the hooks to the guests, who often come from the rnb world: a third of the record has a sung rnb hook, which is good because rapper hooks are often bad and, at the same time, maybe it's too much for an ex-Roc-A-Fella kid's rap album, but which denotes a certain artistic maturity compared to previous records and an ambition to build a different project than usual, albeit linked to his catalogue.
This album is crude, stubby and underwhelming, failing to showcase Freeway's talent and why he was one of the hottest rappers of the early 2000s, ultimately turning out to be a step backwards from his previous efforts. More than a record, it's a rapper's call for help, a cry for help from a boy who has lost his way, has no direction of his own, he can't find it, he's lost and doesn't know what to do and just wants to go home: fell victim to the Roc-A-Fella split in the mid-2000s, Freeway has wandered around as an independent, signing with Cash Money, Real Talk, Rhymesayers and now Babygrande. This effort is clearly inspired by Roc records of the past, drawing from the work of the main artists on the label's roster (State Property, Dipset, West and of course Jay-Z), even if he seems to have got the worst of everyone. Thankfully the boy will be heard and will return to Jay-Z's Roc Nation home label in the following years.
Rating: 5.5/10.
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