Capone — Pain, Time & Glory

I have to listen, again, to this atomic mess. Kiam Akasi "Capone" Holley's debut is very poor. The Queens rapper formed a profitable partnership with his friend Noreaga in the late 1990s, signing a debut that many fans of the East Coast rap scene consider one of the best records of the period. Then, he ended up in prison and Noreaga continued solo, with disconcerting results. When Capone was released, the duo published their second album, but he was already in jail for violating probation. In 2001, the duo signs with Def Jam: Tommy Boy still owns the Capone-N-Noreaga name and Noreaga name and demands that the artists honor their contracts, so, Noreaga changes his moniker to NORE and the group becomes C-N-N. Mixtapes come out and everything seems to be going well until, in 2005, Def Jam surprisingly decides to keep NORE in its ranks, dumping Capone at the same time. The boy doesn't take it well that move and the following year this album is released: it's his solo debut and it's made as an independent rapper.

The album is released by Fastlife, who have already released material from Cormega, AZ, MOP, Tony Touch, Little Brother and Tragedy Khadafi: it has a poor response from the public, coming just outside the top 20 of rap and indie records. The tape consists of 20 tracks and 71 minutes of material. Capone can't carry on such a long album, he can't do it. The production is made by amateurs and professionals who give the rapper their spare beats, scraps and rhythms that sound really bad. Between drums, samples and random sounds, there's perhaps only one beat that is fine, but I'll get to that later. Behind the keyboards are credited with Heatmakerz, Nexxus Entertainment, Dub Dot Z, Screwface, SPK, Reefa, DJ Twinz, Roots (not those Roots), Faith in Da Streetz and Fredo. Guests are C-Murder, Bun B, Scarface, Devin the Dude, Butch Cassidy, Da Block Militia, White Chocolate, Complexions and Raekwon.

The product is constantly cumbersome and irregular, flounders in the slush, is weak. Lyrically, you can't expect anything from this guy – I don't –, it's elementary, while musically, it's sprawling: the boy tries to attract as many audiences as possible, creating songs for every sub-genre of rap, from crunk to the West Coast, from the East Coast to the Southern. It's all generic and forgettable, it might bother you even as background music. The usual big problem with this guy is that his voice is completely unlistenable, it's perpetually annoying. He's so haughty that he decides to put on his album MCs that are considerably better than him and that obscure and annihilate him on every track, from C-Murder to Raekwon, passing through the excellent Scarface and Bun B, up to Devin the Dude. Butch Cassidy and Complexions are two singers and they do their job well, unlike Capone. Some songs are much weaker than expected, due to uninspired production, for example Raekwon ends up on one of the worst rhythms on the record and saves the song with a great flow.

For some albums I've listened to in the past, I haven't taken enough track-by-track notes in order to get a general idea of how the product sounds or to do a track-by-track review. So, my brain feels the need to process and remove useless stuff like this tape from memory, but I only have an evaluation of the individual tracks, and it's often a wrong and outdated evaluation. I should be listening to the albums again and often, in the course of that time, they've disappeared from the internet, and I'm not going to buy them. No album from this guy deserves either mine or your money. At the time of writing, the record is on youtube. Almost everything, not everything. The tracks are randomly mixed with those of another rapper almost of the same name. Go to spotify first and listen to it from there. I don't recommend it, in any case, it's not worth it.

In the end, I was missing some tracks, among others, "Streets Favorite". When the track starts, from the first seconds, I think I clicked something wrong. For a few months now, I've been listening to Shangri-Las songs and I have no idea how I got there. From the Ronette maybe, The Isley Brothers, one of these samples, I don't remember. After the first few seconds, the voice of Mary Weiss comes, which is a beautiful voice, and is definitely the best thing about this whole CD. The sample is easy, "Remember (Walking in the Sand)", the most famous hit of the group, which is from Queens, as Capone: the guy pitched it up the song to make sure he has a chipmunk soul voice to rap on, and the result is musically mixed. Mary Weiss's altered and melodious voice, still fantastic, is the backdrop to the rapper's annoying hardcore voice.

An instrumental of this track would be much better, even if not quite as good as the original single, which is simply brilliant. The instrumental exists and is a curious hit on the internet: "Oh No", credited to Capone. But he does nothing, because the interpreter is Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las group. She deserves a credit that never comes and, frankly, it's hard to understand why she doesn't get it: how do people think Capone is singing or performing? Assuming they know who Capone is, and I'm sure most of the kids who come to that remix have no idea about him. Whatever, right? In 2020, someone, ehf, what to add? How much do you have to go digging to cut out the chipmunk soul sample of a song by an underground rapper featured on a record that no one has ever listened to? Maybe, this album sold five thousand physical copies until 2020. There are crazy people on the internet, mad crazy. A guy cut out Mary Weiss's chipmunk soul sample and it went so well that he became an internet meme on TikTok. The only good thing about this album is that millions of people have listen to and will listen to Mary Weiss and Shangri-Las due to Capone and to the choice to play that sample.