Big Daddy Kane — Taste of Chocolate

As dull as it is, it seems his album number fifteen, instead is "only" the third. At the halfway point of the nineties, Big Daddy Kane is no longer inspired, no longer wants to commit himself and decides to get off the podium of the best MCs of the moment. He does it, very badly, with one of the most commercial efforts of the year.

Cool V, Prince Paul, Andre Booth, Mister Cee and the rapper himself work on the production, releasing a minimal and slow, simplistic and tight sound, a tight and minimal drum machine is used along with mediocre samples (still "Different Strikes", on the fifth song) and some beats stop between the hip house and the new jack: in the second part of the album, the rhythms get worse, it's probably also due to the fact that you no longer want to listen to it after half the album.

Lyrically, there's no progress, the artist remains anchored to braggadocio with some socio-conscious pro-black variation. His delivery is slow, spoken and undertone, he decides to perform in rapping only at the cut number six, where he proves to still have a good technique: "No Damn Good" is quite decent, however, the following choice kills the disc.

Kane says he doesn't want to sell himself (in a ballad...), however, the next track is the one with Barry White, a very slow and boring ballad that, not only has nothing to do with the rest of the album, has nothing to do with even the whole career of Big Daddy Kane. This single cut throws the record directly into the top ten of the soul ranking and brings it to the top of the pop.

The second part of this album, in addition to suffering from the aforementioned production problems, is delivered in soft rap. Kane puts another couple of songs in rapping, but they're something like a quarter of the album overall, one of which is "Down the Line", automatically among the worst posse tracks of the nineties. It's a bad crossover album (evidenced by the choice to close with a hip dance tune), half done, deeply irregular, and without energy, ends up discrediting the rapper's remarkable career.

Promoted by three singles ("Cause I Can Do It Right", #4 among rap singles, "All of Me" and "It's Hard Being the Kane"), released by Cold Chillin' Records, distribute by Reprise Records under the umbrella of the Warner, praised almost unanimously by music critics, this album flows into the top 40 on the Pop chart and peaks #10 among rnb albums.

Rating: 5/10.