A pre-med student at Brown University, Richard "Chubb Rock" Simpson dropped out of school to pursue a career as a rapper, earning his moniker thanks to his imposing physical build. Discovered by his cousin Howard "Howie Tee" Thompson, the boy signed with Select Records, released several singles and in 1988 released his debut studio album.
The product was written, produced and mixed by Chubb Rock and Howie Tee, there are no guests in twelve tracks for a total of three quarters of an hour of music. With a notable exception for having created a narrative comic on the back cover of the vinyl that includes the titles of all the tracks, both authors are devoid of imagination and place a simple cover without being able to find a title for the album, which remains devoid of one, therefore taking the authors' name, as the cover features the rapper's huge name in yellow above that of the producer in black in smaller characters.
Crooklyn Dodgers' Chubb Rock made its debut in 1988 with the help of a generic production of Hitman Howie Tee. The Jamaica native MC shows up without knowing what to do: the rhythms provided by Howie Tee aren't the best of the period, he has a few of jazzy, a few of funky, a couple of soulful female samples and a lot of simple and minimal drum machine to use. The rapping of Chubb Rock is always heavy, rough, lackluster, almost never inspired. He tries to draw from everywhere to make the cuts, most evident of all the Run-D.M.C. delivery attempt ("Daddy's Home").
The scratched hooks try to save him, but going forward only with the hooks for twelve tunes is difficult. For every decent choice like "Momma Was a Rolling Stone" there are three/four very bad ones: the following, "Caught Up", presents a smoother delivery than usual, but still too heavy and rigid, on a minimal and simple rhythm and with an extravagant bridge on the non-recited hook. "Do It Again" is generic like the first four songs (usually the first one always stands out precisely because it's the introductory one, but I'd save the only "DJ Innovator" that seems to me to have a slightly better taste than the following songs), with a rhythm minimal and heavy.
"Punk" is one of the best cuts on the disc thanks to a more than decent rhythm, a minimal and simple drum machine, a little more distant than usual and a smooth and still too rough and rigid delivery of Chubb Rock; the hook is left to the beat. "Rock-N-Roll Dude" and "This Is So Hard" are mediocre, gray tracks, particularly in the second one Chubb's delivery continues to be evidently clumsy in its heaviness, even when above this rapid simplistic beat it starts dropping names to case.
However, it's necessary to dwell on the two vicious tunes in the B side of this LP, "Girl I Love You" and "It's So Hot". Both are among the worst cuts on the record, and it's a bad album. The first one has a simple and minimal skinny beat, heavy with a hook left to a bad female sample in the background and a heavy and lackluster delivery of Chubb Rock, which is smoother and more loose than usual in the penultimate song of the album, another choice indecent with guitar riff in the background on the hook that presents a vicious sample. In these two tracks, Chubb Rock seems more inspired than usual, always clumsy, but more inspired: however, if he wanted to make an entirely dirty rap record he could easily listen to a couple of 2 Live Crew albums and take a cue from there, these two tracks put here at random they say nothing.
Select Records guarantees a distribution for US, UK, Germany and Brazil markets, the LP enters in rnb chart, but is rightly soon forgotten, 4/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment