"I smoked with a lot of college
students,
most of 'em wasn't graduating and they
knew it.
You know the weed slang? Yeah boy, I
speak it fluent.
I light your college dorm with my
entourage from Newark."
from Whateva Man ft. Erick Sermon
I was recently reminded that Redman is
dropping the much anticipated "Muddy Waters 2" later this
year and figured I would do a quick entry on the original "Muddy Waters" album in case this
blog is still up and running by the time the sequel comes out.
Redman has existed on the fringe of
mainstream hip hop for the entirety of his career- always a favorite
among dedicated hip hop fans and fellow emcees, but lacking the mass
appeal to break through to a major audience. Part of the problem, at
least in my humble opinion, is the lack of dance tracks he puts on
albums. The whens and whys of how hip hop went from being a genre
created for it's own sake to a genre that ultimately has to compete
with whatever dance music is being played in clubs at the moment is
an interesting discussion that I might make an entry on at a later
date, but Redman's latest releases have at least partly tried to
remedy that problem.
Muddy Waters, however, came out in -96.
It was a time when hip hop was all over radio and MTV, record sales
were high and major labels were all looking for what might be the
next big thing(which turned out to be The Fugees second album "The
Score" that year). Muddy Waters is a product of this joyful
experimentation with the art form and, well, drugs.
Redman's style of rapping is best
described as funny, not like Weird Al-"haha joke"-funny but
his punchlines tend to be("You remind me of school on a Sunday-
no class").The rhyme patterns are usually overly complex yet
still manage to come across as completely effortless to the
listener("Funk Doctor, got your ass locked down proper/Let me
next blast derelicts, binaca/I'm a Star at War, smoke blunts- don't
Chew-bacca"), at the same time the album is elevating rhyming
words that shouldn't to a whole new level("catch this picture of
me in the mixture/so you wont forget the black Jack the Ripper").
Redman is clearly an amazing lyricist,
but if you're the type of person not amused by advanced wordplay over
drum machines- what are you left with? The album actually manages to
deliver a very clean production with a laid back, jazzy feel to it.
Songs flow into each other, the soundscape ranges between dreamy and
psychedelic with Redman's superb flow fleshing out the songs even if
you don't happen to be a lyrics-type-of-person.
If I were to name a negative, the
constant fixation with smoking marijuana might be a bit over the top
but even when taking that into consideration the album is a classic
that the sequel will have a very tough time comparing favorably to.
High point of the album: Smoke Buddah
Low point of the album: Creepin
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