Hitman — Solo Creep

Debut studio album by Ricky "Hitman" Herd, rapper of San Francisco and member of the hip-hop trio RBL Posse formed together with Black C and Mr. C, this last one dies a couple of months after the release of this album. Black C manages the entire production of the project and is among the guests together with Mr. EEC, N.O.H. Mafia, Iyesha and Hustla Moe.

Black C offers thick music: when a hip-hop album presents a production of this thickness, it can work and not work. For me it does not sound good. There are poor sounds to replace the bass, the synthesizers offer extravagant sounds, drum is drugged and drunk, it cannot do what it should have been called to do for theoretically, the rapping is negligible, submerged by rhythms more bad than the other and the hooks are elementary.

When the bass is present, it cannot exactly drive the track and it's somehow hindered and overwhelmed still by these damned stubborn and bigoted synthesizers who don't allow it to move freely. The drum is still there, too weak and sparse to add anything different from random vomiting on a dance floor where instead of helping the bass, it backs the synthesizers and laughs with them until it faints. When there's a good drum, the bass sucks, and the synthesizers always fall the poker of axes always doing more damage than everything else.

They are not the worst synthesizers that I have heard on a hip-hop record, but they are not even far from that level. The search for melody does not exist and this is a problem. After about twelve minutes, in the fourth track ("All the Niggas"), for the first time from the beginning of the CD, it comes something that looks like a melody, finally: there's a series of piano keys that are put in a scandalous loop, it's as if this loop was slapped, but it also sounds like an unexpected blessing in this musical noise, while Hitman simply repeats the title of the track to recite the hook.

When "Reeper" arrives yes, you understand that something has not worked: there's a melody, it's dark, it's bad, it should work, but it doesn't work for some reason. The drum finally beats after fifteen minutes and it was about time. The synths don't suck too much, not here. So what's the problem? The bass still, unfortunately. It's horrible, squalid, it sounds really bad. The loop also sounds less well than how it sounds in the first thirty seconds, after the first fortyfive seconds it begins to sound both stale and annoying, crazy. Stopped at two minutes would still be a good cut, it becomes exhausting at four and begins to become difficult to fully carry, even on the hook, which is performed quickly, faster than usual, there are annoying sounds for some reason.

The sixth choice boasts a drum that is practically the same as that of before. Which is good, I guess. It does its job. The bass isn't yet what I would like to hear, but it's better than most of the others who have been inserted in these twenty minutes. The synths are good, they play worthily and, for the first time from the beginning of the disc, they give added value to the track. The same can be said of the loop in the background, which yes, adds value for once and makes sense, unlike all the previous ones. Hitman's rapping also starts to flow better than usual and makes sense compared to the previous twenty minutes, after suffering and being left practically without a real role from the beginning of the CD until now it was as if it didn't exist, instead it had always been there even without a main real specific value. Sounds good. Hitman can rap. Strange to notice after twenty minutes and over a third of the disc is gone. Better late than never, I guess.

"G's and Jiggies", honestly I didn't believe at this point that such a high point could arrive in this CD. This is a ballad. Inside Iyesha's sweet singing over a slow production that works thanks to what are simply the best synthesizers on the album: why they arrived only after 25 minutes is a mystery. Hitman's execution is also slower. The drum is there, the bass is there, but I still have something to say, let's forget about it. Everything works in these five minutes and that's what matters. The magic ends when the title track begins: the drums are poor, the bass is poor, the loops are dark and not exactly good, the rapping remains slow. "The Funk" is one of the Hitman's last solo cuts: shabby bass, poor skeletal drums, ridiculous loops, Hitman fixes the tracks with a nice flow, the rhythm isn't, unfortunately. Mr. Cee is a guest on "Would You Know", ok bass, ok piano, honest loops, samples from a Biggie Smalls song, decent drums, good rap, but the song could be much better than it is, overall.

Fellow RBL Posse member Black C also guests on Hitman in the following piece: good dark loop, average bass, poor drums, decent beat, good rap. The twelfth choice also aims high but falls a little below expectations: bad sounding bass, sparse and poor midtempo drums, good dark loops, fine rap. Iyesha is a guest again in the penultimate song: bad hook, very bad bass, bad synths, weak drums, rapping that can't fix the whole beat, it's impossible here. "Mr. Sandman" suffers from the problems already mentioned above: shoddy bass, harsh drums, terrible synthesizers.

The cassette is released on Black C's label The Rightway Productions. The success of the albums released with his group combined with the notable number of sales achieved by this solo disk convinced Atlantic executives to sign the RBL Posse group for their third studio album. Here there's enough material for the average listener. 5/10.