Lil' Flip - I Need Mine $$ (2007)

As a disclaimer for the benefit of anyone reading this blog for the first time, I'm nearly a million years old, I write about what I like, and I make no claim to have had my finger on any pulse since around 1997 at the very latest. Barely literate comments along the lines of thiz opinon iz garbage Dogg Pound is tha $hit are pretty much wasted on me, even if you're not actually some little white dude lurking in his mother's basement. By the same token, I picked this one up because it was there and I enjoyed The Leprechaun. Flip could be the most successful rap artist of all time for all I know and you may already be bored shitless of the guy, but I can't really be arsed to do my research and you'll just have to humour Grandpa as he muses about this new fangled Beatles band.

No, I don't know if you're literally expected to pronounce it I Need Mine Dollar Dollar and it probably doesn't matter. The Leprechaun was decent, if not enough so to have me actively hunting down the rest. Nevertheless, this was in the rack and I had the money, so here we are.

Freestyle king or not, I don't recall Flip as being particularly gymnastic in the lyrical department, but here he's come on somewhat since the debut, and not in the direction I expected. Whenever I try to work out what happened to rap since I stopped listening - or at least got too old and too busy to continue giving it my undivided attention - I always seem to find trap music on the end of the line - guys I've never heard of growling out a few pages of bank statements over what sounds like an 808 being rogered by Sonic the Hedgehog, and all recorded on a fucking smartphone. If Lil' Flip ever went down that road, as I felt certain he probably would, there was no sign of it in 2007. Lyrically, if he's not quite Nas, you can tell he's thinking about this shit and putting in the work, developing his own voice beyond being one of those guys who turns up on someone else's CD to remind us that he also finds himself in a financially enviable situation; but two whole discs…

Not many rappers can manage the double disc thing, and yet Lil' Flip succeeds where other, possibly better publicised artists have fallen on their arses. The key seems to be variety. The standard is already high for this slightly expensive sounding album, with even those beats steering closest to the trap demonstrating a certain wide screen polish elevating them above the usual ringtones. Elsewhere we have tracks recalling the golden age of west coast g-funk and Real Hip Hop which swings across to the other side of the country, and it all blends seamlessly into a genuinely eclectic whole, feeling, if anything, a little like one of the Neptunes era Snoop albums. For someone so firmly rooted in his home soil - Houston, Texas for those unaware - Flip does a great job of covering all bases, in terms of both geography and even era, acknowledging the east coast roots of the culture as well as the usual roll call of greats; and we have guest spots from names similarly diverse as MJG, DJ Squeeky, Scott Storch, Mannie Fresh, Nate Dogg, Three-6-Mafia, Yukmouth and others. There's very little that's not to love about these - holy mother of God - thirty-nine tracks spanning social conscience to good old fashioned boasting, somehow amounting to a surprisingly soulful, feelgood set.

I probably need to have a look and see if he did any others.

C-Murder - The Truest Shit I Ever Said (2005)

C-Murder has, at least on a couple of occasions, been characterised as not much more than a Tupac impersonator, which has always struck me as a little unfair. Shakur's influence is undeniable and can be heard on certain tracks, but there's more to this guy's delivery, even if they share thematic common ground for reasons which should be fucking obvious. C-Murder's monologues lack the raucous celebration heard on much of Tupac's material, sounding positively introverted by comparison - a man on the edge mumbling and agonising to himself. It's intense, almost hard to listen to, and not actually like the work of any other rap artist that I can think of, once you listen closely.

Another thing which strikes me as a little unfair is C-Murder having been a resident of the stripey hole for a period now approaching two decades, following his supposed shooting of Steve Thomas in January, 2002. I'm no lawyer, but the case looks kind of patchy from over here, and it's possibly worth remembering that the American legal system often seems to have some difficulty telling the difference between actual use of firearms in murder cases and black men who rap about the same; but who the fuck knows?

C-Murder had issued four albums prior to incarceration, five if you include Tru Dawgs - although it's sort of a compilation - but not one which ever seemed quite so great as it probably should have been. Bossalinie from 1999 came pretty close to perfect but just wasn't quite there - way too many tracks, too many creaking skits, the usual trouble. Trapped in Crime could have learned something from previous mistakes but was ultimately hamstrung by the crisis of confidence which had seemingly overwhelmed the label, resulting in beats which aspired to snatch the crown back from that other New Orleans label by approximating what Mannie Fresh had been doing, while turning away from the producers who made No Limit great in the first place. So Truest Shit was his fifth album - sixth if we're counting Tru Dawgs - vocals recorded by his lawyer during visiting hours, then presumably striped onto the tracks after the fact.

I guess the sudden introduction of porridge to the artistic equation serves as one hell of a focus, because never even mind just great in context of the C-Murder back catalogue, The Truest Shit I Ever Said is a landmark rap album - intense as fuck but as ever kept in check by C-Murder's somber, contemplative delivery, and matched to the perfect range of beats - sharp, electronic and yet powerfully soulful. Even in tearing the club up, even during seemingly unapologetic tales of gunplay*, this is an album written by a man who has had a lot of time to think about this stuff, and his testimony is as powerful as you might hope.

Of course, it turns out he's released five more since this one, all vocalised from with the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which I've somehow missed because I've had a musically confusing decade. On the other hand, I make no claims towards being a rolling news service or having a finger on any particular pulse, so please feel free to use the above information as you see fit.

*: Possibly because he doesn't actually have anything to apologise for.