Released from prison, Capone records the duo's second studio album with Noreaga. Behind the keyboards several soldiers are enlisted to the cause of the duo: L.E.S., The Alchemist, DJ Premier, Lord Finesse, Havoc, Dame Grease, EZ Elpee, Rush, Kyze, Nokio, Kenya, Jewellz, Tony Aviles, Mike Fortunato, Omar Glover, SPK and Chris Liggio. Guests are Foxy Brown, Nas, Mobb Deep, Musaliny & Maze, Carl Thomas, Complexions, Algado & Shoballotti, Goldfingaz and Troy Outlaw. Now that Capone is out of jail, the two no longer need the third unofficial member, Tragedy Khadafi, which curiously isn't present even a single time in these 20 songs of 70 minutes, despite being the main host and the clear driving force of their previous work, and that much of the success and quality of that CD was due to his talent.
A lot has happened in the three years since the first album, Noreaga has signed two solo records including one at number one in the rap chart, now Capone wants to get there too. There's such a rush to arrive, and you can feel it from the start. The boys have Carl Thomas sing the intro in a song that pays homage to Sam Cooke, then there's a skit. The first real cut is number three, "Phonetime": the concept is good, Nore and Capone trade bars all the time, however, the production of L.E.S. it's excessively cheap. The producer seeks a sound that's at the same time gloomy, sad, melancholy, mild and elegant: yes, John Frizzel's "Julie's Theme" from the soundtrack of the fresh "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" (1998) has it all, but it shouldn't have been touched in any way. Instead, L.E.S. exacerbates the sample and puts a crazy hi-hat next to it that impoverishes the sound, takes away the original melody, appeal and darkness, and gives it a cumbersome and ineffective aspect.
"Queens" sounds quite similar to the previous one, although The Alchemist adds a chopped and looped soul chipmunk sample to it. The duo spits hardcore on a somewhat generic, subdued production, Complexions' hook is gooey, unfit. With a disappointed and resigned soul we're approaching the best moment of the career of Capone & Noreaga aka The Invincible, Untouchable, C-N-N. DJ Premier hooks up the word "C-N-N" from Capone talking to Nore in "One Love" of Victor Santiago's solo debut two years earlier, a line from "T.O.N.Y." of the first album of the duo that from average brag, he transforms into iconic simply by sampling it in his song, and a loop from Jimmie and Vella's "Hey Boy Over There" that breathes a little more than usual, instead of two or three seconds, that's at least five.
Flawless doesn't adequately describe what Preemo did here, it's one of the best rhythms of the year. Nore & Capone cannot be wrong even if they want to and they aren't wrong: in particular, Noreaga begins by saying that his latest full album, released the year before and led by the executives of Tommy Boy, the same label that also releases this CD, sucks. By heart, I don't remember any rapper who made a similar statement before him, in any case, he's one of the first. The rest is just great fluid and energetic flow, before the hook comes, full of scratched samples, always great, Premier is one of the best ever to do this thing. Capone arrives, and his voice here is much more accessible and good than in any of his other recorded tracks, he flows better, delivers better, this soundscape has something magical. They close with a short verse each and create a piece that is undeniably a masterpiece.
"Bang, Bang" is Alchemist's second and final production. It's not as good as it should be. The original sample shows a wickedness and an atmosphere of disquiet that the synthesized beat of the alchemist fails to faithfully reproduce. The drum isn't particularly bad, but it's definitely not good. Capone and Noreaga spit hardcore, then the song is closed by Foxy Brown, in a dissing to rival Lil' Kim, who has just taken part in the remix of "Quiet Storm" by Mobb Deep. Lil' Kim's next rerun comes later with gunfire towards C-N-N outside radio station Hot 97. Skit, then there's the eighth cut, in which beatmakers Kenya and Nokio create a production that sounds like a third-series Neptunes rhythm. Skit, then there's another cheap and generic beat, rappers spit hardcore without adding much to the beat. "All We Got is Us" presents one of the worst beats of the edition, made by EZ Elpee, the boys sound badly above this rhythm made up of vomiting noises.
There are three different beatmakers credited for "Brothers", Fortunato, Glover and Aviles, and they provide bad production, I can't figure out what they wanted to do. One of the best moments of the album coincides with the arrival of Nasir Jones in "B EZ": the production of L.E.S. it's effective, functional. It serves as a minimal sound carpet — there's a drum beating and in the background what should be a discreet piano sample directly from a gem of master Henry Mancini — for the velvety delivery of Nas, which after a period of tarnishing in the late nineties, is coming back stronger than before. Here, he throws subliminal bars at his rival Jay-Z, with one of his best flows. Capone & Nore deliver bars with inspiration and energy, but it's quite evident that Escobar plays in another league, other country.
"Gunz in da Air" is a Havoc rhythm. Really? Ah. I personally don't like it and tend to avoid this track due to the not easily accessible production, at the expense of the usual hardcore execution by the guys from Queens. There's another skit, which precedes "Full Steezy", SPK's playful rhythm, it's pretty cheap and bad, rap is fine. Havoc is back behind the keyboards for the posse "Queens' Finest" together with Mobb Deep and the duo Algado & Shoballotti: his rhythm is still not good. For the umpteenth time in this confusing and shaky album, the original sample sounds one way and the beat chosen by the producers sounds almost completely different. There's a crazy hi-hat that ruins everything and the drum isn't competent. A verse each for Capone, Prodigy, Noreaga and Havoc, while the other boys perform the hook.
This cut should easily be one of the best on the record. And it isn't. I mean, it's one of the most successful tracks. But it's still not excellent. You have Mobb Deep and CNN, plus a couple of guys that some could easily label as weed carriers, on a Havoc beat. In 2000. The ingredients are there, but something in the dough doesn't seem to have worked well. Take the rhythm off, let it go, the average fan might like it too, I don't care. Capone walks in and spits as if his life depended on it. He tributes Nas: the friend four years earlier identified himself with a gun in "I Gave You Power", frankly one of the most powerful tests recorded within the four walls in the rap of the nineties. Capone is a bullet. Hardcore, energetic, determined, punctual. In full confidence, he's as sensational as he's shining in this cut, which has only just begun. Then the track goes out, right after Algado & Shoballotti's back n forth hook. Prodigy enters, lifeless, without energy, without desire, barely perceptible. There's one of the weakest "ayo" I've ever heard, and I arrive after listening to several mumble rap albums. It sounds at its worst ever.
In 1999, Mobb Deep saw their new LP bootlegged, everyone was waiting for a third classic in a row, and instead the critics received it in a mixed way: more or less the same thing happened to Nas, in the same period. Both are guests on this LP, and both are losing relevance in hip-hop as quickly and easily as they gained it, which is scary. While Nas manages to get his career back on track, Mobb Deep will not return to that prominent role in the following years. Here they're in decline. But that's not all. It's as if Prodigy didn't want to appear on a Capone-N-Noreaga album yet, he just didn't want to. His verse sounds like a dissing against Capone and Noreaga themselves: the first thing he does is "send to hell them", marking the tone on the "f" word and "let's ride on". He keeps mumbling bars for half a minute with his worst flow, the words struggle to get out of his mouth, then he goes back against the duo, saying he's forced to "havin to deal with these fake n*****". Noreaga and Havoc have another kind of attitude, even if they can't bring this song among the strong moments.
"You Can't Kill Me" has generic rhythm and average delivery from the guys. "Don't Know Nobody" features a minimal production by Chris Liggio and Lord Finesse, decent rap by Capone, Noreaga, Maze and Musoliny, none particularly impressive. "Hey, Y'All" is slightly below average, poor generic rhythm, hardcore rap by Noreaga, Capone and one of the rappers of the duo Algado & Shoballotti who's not properly credited.
20 tracks, 5 skits, 70 minutes. Describing this product as a generic sophomore jinx album would probably be too harsh, but just as correct. In the three years that have passed since the duo released their first CD, a lot has happened in the rap game. I wanted to list a couple, but all these reviews I'm doing on Capone and especially Noreaga, they're getting so long that even I don't really want to read them. In summary, the production is no longer as dark as in the past, even the street rap and thug rap that were fashionable until a few years ago are disappearing to make room for new trends and new musical genres within hip-hop. The music chosen by these dudes is no longer as effective as it was in the past, it's irregular, disordered, cheap, poor, inaccessible, often bad. The lyrics are pretty much the same as the previous work, with less imagination than before, still revolving around street, thug, violence, drugs, weed, crime and girls topics.
The guests are a mix of declining experts of a dying subgenre (Mobb Deep, Nas and Foxy Brown all come from somewhat disappointing and no longer actual projects, especially the last two fresh from the flop of mafia supergroup The Firm) and amateur friends who can't handle an entire mainstream LP that exceeds the listening hour. There's an excessive amount of material, and it's not good material: there's one excellent cut ("Invincible"), and another solid one driven solely by the guest rapper ("B EZ"), while the rest is almost exclusively negligible. The fact that there's not a single presence of Tragedy Khadafi leaves me deeply perplexed and disappointed. Embittered. It's something I can't understand. Tragedy Khadafi is the executive producer of the previous album, the main guest, probably the author of most of the lyrics and certainly at least half of the album, and the third unofficial member of CNN. Then he disappeared.
My doubts are vaporized by a dissing track that Noreaga releases in 1998, titled "Halfway Thugs Part 2", which is addressed directly to Tragedy Khadafi: the national Nore isn't satisfied with the monetary distribution that took place for the first CNN album, which went more to the affiliate of the Juice Crew than to the other two emerging young rappers, and decides to marginalize Khadafi from his new album. Instead of him, the guest slots are filled by friends Algado & Shoballotti (you can also find them under the Final Chapter credit), that somehow are the main guests and that you may not even notice during the whole listening.
This is their latest album with Tommy Boy, distributed by Warner Bros.: it gets a good result in the standings, is in the top ten in the rap chart and second among the independent releases. There's a solo track by Nore ("Gunz in da Air") and a solo track by Capone ("Full Steezy"), no strong singles, some go on the charts, but it's not even worth mentioning which songs they are, I don't think you can guess them by just looking at the tracklist. Overall, it's not a good album. More important than anything else, there is a sadistic tendency to these first two C-N-N albums in continuing to create, nurture and foment dissing: while in the first there were those between Dogg Pound and them, and between Noreaga and Prodigy, in this there are the one towards Tommy Boy, the one between Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim and the one that is about to be born between Nas and Jay-Z. It's a product that in size and scope should actually be bigger than it is, but its promotion is undermined by extra-musical events: Capone ends up in prison again, shortly before the release of the album, preventing the duo from be more successful.
Rating: 5/10.
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