Run DMC - Crown Royal (2001)

It wasn't exactly a comeback given that Darryl McDaniels turns up on just three tracks, having regarded the project with scepticism; but it's a great album, regardless. Run was keen to remind us of the group's significance in rap history, particularly with respect to the whole rock-rap crossover deal which had pretty much begun with Run DMC - not just Walk This Way but their whole sound which was always heavy even in the absence of guitars. Thus we get guest slots and collaborations with Kid Rock, the bloke from Limp Bizkit and other rock-rap types unlikely to have scored points in the pages of The Source; also Method Man, Fat Joe, Nas and others, because Run DMC were integral to the evolution of rap as we know it, not just the Beastie Boys. It looks a lot like the old school getting down with the kids, at least until you listen to the thing.

Contrary to what one might expect, Crown Royal was never about old guys trying to stay relevant and even without guests, these tracks are as good as anything they've ever recorded. If Run's delivery remains rooted in the old school, it wasn't like he'd ceased to evolve and expand or had lost any of his powers. This is also true of the music which kept the faith as we'd recognise it while nevertheless moving with the times - at least as of 2001. It was a new album more than it was ever an exercise in smoking a pipe and looking back with a wrinkled smile.

Of the rock-rap numbers, the collaboration with Trump's fave homeboy, Kid Rock is the one which goes hard and blows even the strongest possible objections out of the water, but none of them are surplus to requirements, even though I don't have a fucking clue who or what Sugar Ray or Third Eye Blind may be. In the name of variety, more than half the album is regular hip-hop and so we get Queen's Day featuring local lads Nas and Prodigy, effectively passing the baton, I suppose. There are two you'll need to skip. Both feature Jermaine Dupri, and if It's Over is musically decent, the Jagged Edge collaboration is a waste of both time and its half-arsed Marvin Gaye impersonation. I'm sure Dupri must have done something to justify his reputation, or at least the fact of my having heard of the fucker, but I have no idea what it might be. He doesn't actually rap on It's Over, for example, instead preferring to explain the extent of his own popularity as quantified by how much he has in his savings bank, delivered in the usual whiny voice of wasps in a jam jar somehow as a tribute to Run DMC, the logic being when someone as amazing as what I am pays a compliment then you better believe it means something; and the cunt won't shut up. Every gap created by Run pausing to draw breath is filled with Dupri reminding us how wealthy he is or just saying yeeeah in case we've stopped thinking about him. Run rhymes about buying his girlfriend a Mercedes, and we hear Dupri croaking me too in the background just in case anyone had begun to doubt his financial standing.

It could have done with a bit more Darryl, but Crown Royal remains a classic despite requiring two judicious stabs of the skip function; and with rap's increased tendency to drift off into the realm of music for furries and anime twats, we really need to remember the originators and how music works best when it does what it should do. This one does what it should do very well.

Fat Joe - Jealous Ones Still Envy (2001)

This being a rap album, it has occurred to me that I might like to skip the usual preamble about middle class wankers, given how I always end up writing the same thing. It would be nice, but I'm still reeling from Monday's facebook encounter with one David Yeomans, an Australian gentleman with a home page dominated by the Sonnenrad and praise for President Trump. The Sonnenrad is a symbol which was very popular amongst high-ranking members of the Third Reich, and surprisingly Yeomans is not a fan of rap music.

Hip hop is not my thing though, I do not like the beats or the culture and environment it emerged from. To support it is to popularise ghetto culture and that is wrong. You cannot say it doesn't either, just remember the number of teenagers in Australia with gang bandannas and acting like "homies".

Furthermore:

Yep, but it is a very destructive one and a very vicious one. For the most anyway, I will not deny there are a small few who do not sing about rape, violence and drugs, but it is the minority, and for certain not the popular ones.

I'd bother to address some of this, but 1) the opinion of a person who knows nothing about the subject upon which they have chosen to opine isn't really worth taking seriously, and 2) neither are the views of anyone with a big fat Nazi sun wheel as the masthead of their facebook page, so screw you, Dave.

This was Joe's first album following the death of Big Pun, his partner in rhyme and best buddy - a bereavement which led to the hugely acrimonious bust up with Triple Seis and Cuban Link of Joe's Terror Squad. I never quite worked out what happened there, but it sounded like a series of stupid misunderstandings piled one on top of the other. Anyway, at the time I was surprised that he even had a new album, given the circumstances; but I suppose I shouldn't be because those circumstances are what shaped this record. There are lighter moments, but it really isn't a happy collection.

He is really singing a lot about rape, violence, and drugs, Dave.

Joe has often spoken about how, whilst Pun was lyrically a natural, he himself has always had to work at his art, but it doesn't really show here. He isn't in Pun's league in terms of the weirder crossword puzzle clues, but there's nothing shabby or obviously laboured about Joe's testimony and he makes up for shortcomings with a delivery which renders almost every other track a declaration of war - complete with the trumpets in a few cases. King of NY and My Lifestyle both attain face-punching levels of bellowed swagger you wouldn't ordinarily expect to hear outside an M.O.P. record; and then M.O.P themselves guest on Fight Club a couple of tracks later so that all gets a bit sweaty and no mistake.

I guess they must be his "homies", Dave.

Half of Jealous Ones Still Envy sounds like the work of a man who just had his best pal die, and who's going to keep on cracking skulls until the pain goes away - supported by dirty, steel-toecapped east coast beats of the kind which otherwise customarily fail to score in the pop hit chart parade, which nevertheless became one of our fat friend's specialities - namely smuggling that grimy, uncommercial shit right into the heart of clubland and getting everyone moving like it's Britney Spears. The other half of the album makes concessions and is arguably more musically populist, but somehow without it ever quite feeling that way. The bittersweet What's Luv?, for example, could almost be the theme from My Little Pony, and yet there's a rough edge keeping it in line with the rest if you listen close. Only the Latin-tinged It's OK really spoils the pattern with a little Ricky Martin dance, but Joe is of Latino heritage so I guess he has as much right to indulge as anyone - although it's the only point at which I noticed what a long album this is.

I spent roughly fifteen years listening to little else but rap music, and mostly the stuff where they sing about rape, violence and drugs; and with hindsight I've noticed how this period was also the one during which my life became pretty tough going in certain respects. It makes sense, because there's nothing like this kind of music when you feel as though you're living under siege conditions by one definition or another. It really gets you through the tough times. Coincidentally, since January the 20th, I've found myself listening to a lot more rap than has recently been the case, and I've a feeling I may be listening to little else over the next couple of years.

DJ Squeeky presents Tom Skeemask - 2 Wild for the World (1998)

Just the other day I happened to slip upon a patch of oil left over and not yet cleared up after stripping down and cleaning my numerous hand guns and assault rifles, and falling against the computer I found myself accidentally online and unintentionally logged on to a bulletin board dedicated to the children's television show Doctor Who. Naturally I made attempts to sign out but, already confused, I found that I had instead been drawn into a section of the forum dedicated to music, and specifically to a thread purportedly set up for fans of hip hop and rap, although it would be fairer to describe it as a thread for forum members owning one or two rap albums. It took only seconds to locate the first claim of there having been no decent rap music recorded since the first Wu-Tang Clan album, because it's all that Puff Daddy and commercial rap like Lil' Wayne, and Public Enemy were great, and in fact It Takes A Nation of Millions is probably the best rap album ever - and yes, I know I'm going out on a limb with such a bold, unpopular statement - and we don't like that commercial rap because we only like the underground stuff which you probably won't have heard of because it's underground and not commercial like Puff Daddy and that bass music, whatever it's called; the Fugees were good too, and that Will Smith is a great entertainer...

Luckily I had already returned my firearms to the rack in Junior's room, because I really, really felt like emptying a clip into the fuckin' screen, lemme tell ya...

This was about rap for people who don't actually like rap - rap deemed more adventurous and underground than the Puff Daddy commercial rap because it appeals to fans of Radiohead and really interesting groups of that sort, because it's progressive and exciting and not actually much like rap, which is all too commercial and made by angry black men talking about guns and money and saying some really sexist stuff too, like that so-called Fat Joe. Alex Petridis in the Guradian pointed out that Fat Joe has a song called Shit is Real which just goes to show what a stupid, uneducated fellow he is. Shit is Real - I mean come on, it's hardly William Blake now is it snurf snurf...

So that was how I came to experience a sudden and overpowering need to cleanse my soul with some real rap, as distinguished by its copious swearing, threatening behaviour, actual beats, and fixation on real shit of flavours rarely experienced by folks with fucking cLOUDDEAD records; and as is appreciated by people who listen to rap. This will undoubtedly resemble sneering, but fuck it - if you don't like rap just go ahead and say it, but don't claim otherwise whilst referencing some shit that came out a quarter of a century ago as representative of the last time it was good enough for you to bother listening. Piss off and take your friggin' Buck 65 twelves with you back to fuckin' Starbucks.

Tom Skeemask is, for what it may be worth, the real deal. He says stuff you really might not want to hear, but which might do you good to hear; and whilst he may not be the greatest rapper in the world, he really ain't that bad, and if there's any suggestion that maybe he doesn't mean it, or that he's just saying this stuff so as to appear like some commercial rap big shot - you know, like that Puff Daddy, well - he's probably not that hard to track down, so please feel free to go ahead and tell him to his face. It's violent and territorial because sometimes life is violent and shitty and unhappy, and territory is the only thing some people have at the lower end of the economy.

This is southern rap - hard words spat out at machine gun tempo and a hot, slow Memphis vibe timed to the pace of life in the hotter states, places in which the weather obliges you to move around real slow for the best part of the day. It's closer in spirit to Eightball & MJG than any Hypnotize Minds thing - electric piano, lush guitar licks, and a bass so deep you can only hear it in cars, it being designed to scare the shit out of whoever you happen to drive past at snail's pace with your window down. DJ Squeeky lays down the tracks and Tom Skeemask tells it like it is, and there isn't much more to say about it because it speaks for itself, what with being the real thing and all.

I feel better now.

Thank you, Tom Skeemask.