Alternative: Marshall Mathers LP 2

I believe that Eminem is the best rapper alive and the second greatest rapper of all time (rest in peace Notorious BIG).  That is just my opinion and people have the right to differ.

But I was nervous about Marshall Mather LP 2. I thought it was a mistake to name the album after one of his three classic records (the other two being Slim Shady LP and Relapse. Again, my opinion).  MMLP was generational defining – it was the soundtrack of my teenage years. I was angry, sensitive, stupid and irrational as a kid and it was amazing to hear all of these traits reflected back at me – from a white boy no less.

For me, the only sour point to Em’s catalogue is Recovery. It was that record, not Relapse, where he sounded unsure of himself. He sounded too forced, uncomfortable and importantly devoid of humour. Humour is the one ingredient that people overlook when it comes to hip-hop, it is a vital piece of the cog. Notorious BIG had it in spades, so does Redman and so did Eminem but he lost it in Recovery. I hated the pop-hooks and the constant screaming verses.

So, yes, I was scared that I would be disappointed when it came to finally listening to MMLP2. Berserk dampened a lot of my fears but as soon as I heard the Ri-Ri assisted The Monster, I started to worry again.

Although I pre-ordered the album, I also illegally downloaded it when it leaked a couple days before it’s 5^th November release date. What I heard surprised me and says a lot about Eminem’s place among today’s rap elite.

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First things first, this album is not as good or close to being as good as the first Marshall Mathers LP. Surprised, right? 

A big reason for this is the lack of Dr Dre anywhere on this album. I don’t know if Eminem thinks that Dre beats no longer cut it in hip-hop but the musical foundation the good Doctor provided him in Relapse says very different. In fact, it was the illusion of Dre that provided one of the highlights on this new album – Brainless sounds like a Dr Dre beat, with its running piano lines and smacking drum beat. It was great to hear.

Another mark against the album is the number of choruses that are sung by pop artists. Don’t get me wrong, the choruses are not as bad as the ones on Recovery, but they did leave me a little disappointed. It kept the album from feeling more ‘hard-core’ than it could have. For instance, Legacy could have been a great song but the chorus makes it almost unlistenable.

The biggest mistake on this album is the song Stronger than I was. It is a terrible, terrible, terrible song. Just terrible. I have played this album for a little over a week and not once have I managed to listen to this song all the way through. Eminem cannot sing, his whole career tells you as much and yes he has gotten away with it in the past but this was a step too far. I discovered that there was a rap verse on this song through agreat video review by the fellas over at Dead End Hip Hop and it is sensational but it still doesn’t save that song. It is just bad. So bad.

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Given the little time I have had with MMLP 2, I am reluctant to make any absolute judgements about it. I thought Recovery was the best thing since The Eminem Show and I ended up growing out of love with it to the point where I regarded to be a lesser album that Encore. But what I will say is this I felt more at ease with this Eminem album than I did with his last three offerings.

If you're not a fan of Eminem, you will not like this album. If you are a fan of one element of the Eminem ethos, you still may not like this album. But if you’ve been a fan since ‘My name is’ and you appreciate the different elements to his character and how he has evolved as an MC, the likelihood is that you will love this album. There is some wacky Slim Shady LP shit on here (So much better, Brainless), some Marshall Mathers joints (Bad Guy) and some songs which will have your jaw on the floor (Rap God).

Importantly, this album sounds fresh and makes you feel like Eminem is breaking new ground as an MC and a lot of credit has to go to Rick Rubin and his (ironically) nostalgia inducing beats.  I loved Rhyme or Reason from the moment I heard it – the beat is unlike anything I've heard Eminem rap on which made it so refreshing. The same can be said for Love Game, which I believe should have been the first single for this album. Kendrick Lemar holds his own on the song until Eminem shows why he is truly one of the greatest with his second verse.

But the highlight from the Rick Rubin joints for me is So Far, a truly unique Eminem song. This is a song that grew on me with every listen – again, it is unlike any other Eminem track that I have heard and the whitest hip-hop track to come out of Dr Dre’s camp since… well, White Trash Party, I suppose. What makes the song interesting is not the way the beat switches up but the way Eminem tells a story about an aging successful hip-hop star who, like all parents, struggle with new technology and pop-culture. Jay-Z tried to do the same thing with a track off of his much maligned comeback album, Kingdom Come – it didn’t work. So Far is a very mature and self-aware hip-hop track which many are overlooking.

This new mature outlook is more prevalent on the track Headlights. Again, if you have been an Eminem fan from the start you will understand why this track is important, emotional and shocking. Shit, I mean just listen to the first song from the previous Marshall Mathers LP. It also illustrates why Eminem is one of the best rappers working today – I don’t think as audience members we deserved or needed to hear this very personal song, but he put it out anyway.

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Marshall Mathers LP 2 surprised me by being better than I expected it to be. It isn’t a very consistent album, the feel of the album is very erratic and the lows of the album sometime reach ground floor. I am also very uncomfortable with how comfortable I was with the homophobic and sexist lyrics on this album – I just carried on nodding away to the beat.

But at its best, some songs on this album rival anything Eminem has ever released. His word play is still second to none ("maybe that’s why I’m so bananas, I appeal to all walks of life") and he still makes you laugh when you don’t want to ("I’ve got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one, she’s all 99 of em, I need a machine gun").

The album finds Eminem at a very interesting point in his life and he is very aware of this.It is clear that Eminem is not like many rappers doing their thing today - Em is embracing his evolution and his transformation into being an elder states-person of hip-hop 

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I want to finish by talking about Evil Twin. It is the greatest Eminem song of all damn time.

Just my opinion.

                               Chocolate Slim

Alternative: The Three Unicorns part 2

2 - Ms Hill

Lauryn Hill wrote another book for the bible in 1998. Nothing short of divine intervention could have caused a mere human being to produce such a (almost) perfect album.

I distinctly remember the first time I heard the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I was too young –  I wasn’t ready for what I experienced. I wasn’t in the car, I wasn’t chilling out somewhere – I was smack bang in front of our family’s portable stereo, with my nose to the speakers. I was unable to move. I was transfixed. 

That album is vitally important to black music. It is rare to hear a confident and intelligent black woman talking about religion, relationships and her life without sexualising herself. Ms Badu is probably the only other artist to come close to Ms Hill. I didn’t have an overbearing need to shag Ms Hill when I was listening to her album, I had an urge to listen to her and by the end of it I was awe struck. You compare this album to any hip-hop/ RnB offering of today and you start to realise how far black music has fallen.

To this day, I had never heard anything as fierce, as delicate, as raw or as beautiful as The Miseducation. It was and it still as an extraordinary album.

...

The problem is the greatness of Ms Hill’s debut solo album. The Miseducation was/is so great that expectations were impossible for Lauryn Hill to meet. In other words – the only way was down. The music that she did release after that act of God, such as that MTV Unplugged album that had no beats (word to 50) didn’t come anywhere close to meeting the standards she set for herself. Not even close.

Then she went on a decade long hiatus. A hiatus which saw all sorts of rumours about Ms Hill starting to swirl. A hiatus which saw her fellow Fugees add fuel to the fire by feeding those rumours. I started to lose hope that we would ever see Lauryn Hill come back into the public spotlight.

Then she, along with Pras and Wycleff, took part in David Chappelle’s Block Party and her performance was nothing short of magical. I started to dream again. Then every song she released since, every performance she has done has been substandard. It breaks my heart to say it, but there it is. Substandard.

...

I went to a gig she did in London. Ms Hill was late, but I didn’t mind. What I did have beef with was what she did during her performance. The majority of her set was double timed and most of the singing tracks she did was a hybrid of untimed rapping. It hurt so bad watching that performance – but it didn’t feel good (I’ll get my coat).

To make it worse, my experience at this gig wasn’t the exception, it was the rule. The reviews she got from her own fans were just hard to stomach.

Also hearing her talk lately is even more  heartbreaking. She sounds pretentious and has lost her ear to the ‘streets’. One of her biggest asset was that you related to everything she said and I don’t get that impression when I read her open letters.

...

So why I'm hopeful that she’ll release a new album and I’m I hopeful that album will be any good? The answer is... I don’t know. I am more hopeful of a Lauryn Hill album than I am of a Dr Dre album, that is for sure.

In the past 5 years, Ms Hill has tried to engage more with her fans, which is a start. Yes, there have been moments of madness, but it is a start. Also, her latest track Neurotic Society isn’t half bad – she’s trying to say some real shit on that track.

Importantly, as cruel as it sounds, I think we’ll get an album because she needs the money. Her tax woes have forced her to sign a new music deal which I hope gets her to focus making a stellar album.

I am well aware that this all sounds very selfish, hoping that another human’s plight forces them to do something that might benefit my life – but bloody hell does RnB need Lauryn Hill. All I know is that Janelle can’t do it by herself and Beyonce sends to many mixed signals for my liking.

Importantly, hip-hop needs her because Nicki Minaj is doing Ms Hill's legacy of female MC-ing an injustice that smacks of disrespect. 

Alternative: The Three Unicorns

Music, for me, is intensely personal – even more so than films. It seems like the older I get, the more serious I take music. No longer do I consume singles and albums like I do a chocolate bar – I now think long and hard before make a purchase. And yes, I still legally buy albums.

The problem is a lot of what is popular today just isn’t for me. Whether that is popularity in terms of album sales or critically - not a lot of music from today moves me. This is especially the case when I think about black music. Black music has lost it’s cool and it is heart-breaking to see. If your name isn’t Janelle Monae or Esperanza Spalding then you are likely not breaking any new ground.

But there are three artists that keep me irrational hopeful. There is something about these three artists that make me believe – that make me hope – that they will swoop in and save black music. I call them the Unicorns – you all probably know them as Lauyrn Hill, Dr Dre and D’angelo.

I consider all three of these artists legends who’s titan status within black music can never be questioned. All three of these artists have created music that mean the world to me, music that has changed their genre and music that I keep going back to. I love them all.

In the next couple of days I’m going to talk about why they are important and why I am still hopeful they can save black music. Of course I’ve also ranked them because I’m weird like that.

...

3 – Dr Dre

Here is the thing, I am 90% sure that Dr Dre will never release another solo-album ever again. Yet it is that 10% that I keep obsessing about. I think hip-hop needs Dr Dre more than Dr Dre needs hip-hop and he’s making so much money off of those damn headphones that the chances of him making music ‘for the love of it’  are not likely. Yet, it is that 10% that keeps me hoping.

And why do I hope? The Chronic and 2001 is why. One of these albums would be able to buy and drink alcohol in America, while the other is a teenager but they are two of the best albums I have ever heard – from any genre of any generation. 

Although I am not a gangster, or a pimp, nor do I drink 40s (what the hell is a 40) and I’ve not smoked so much as a cigarette in my whole life, these two albums make you believe that you know that life, that you’ve lived it and you are part of that west-side gangster culture.

Now I am not trying to say that Dr Dre and co’s skill of making you feel like Tony Montana is a good thing (that is debatable of course), but the way Dr Dre makes you feel while all these gangsterisms are flying around is nothing short of magic. Dr Dre is simply one of the best producers to ever live. He’s the hip-hop’s Quincy Jones. I listen to songs like ‘Nuthing but a G thang’ and just wonder why I can’t help grinning and walking like I have a limp. Dr Dre’s beats almost force you to nod your head furiously and not many hip-hop producers can do that consistently.

I am also one of the few who believes that Dr Dre’s finest achievement is 2001. An album which has grown on me ever since it was released in 1999 and just like Chronic, this album changed hip-hop. This album introduced us to the ultra-gangster, a more polished gangster than the one introduced to us during Dre's Chronic era. This gangster was richer and more careless, but ultimately likeable. 2001 was Dr Dre basically introducing the world to the YOLO lifestyle before it was bastardised by the rest of hip-hop. 

 The older I get the more I listen to 2001. Just when I think I am too old to listen to such music, the summer comes along and suddenly Dre is telling me that “things just ain’t the same for gangsters”.

I personally don’t think that Dr Dre has anything to prove – the problem is that I am in the minority. If he came out after 2001 and told the world not to expect any more solo albums, I think no one would have batted an eye lid. But instead Dr Dre actively promoted his follow up album Detox for almost a decade. There have been so many false starts, so many singles that gave people hope that Detox may materialise that I understand people’s frustration with Dre.

These false hopes and rumours of Dr Dre’s anxiety about Detox not being up to scratch has opened the door to people questioning his legacy – unfairly so. People also point to Dr Dre’s age and the terrible ‘I need a Doctor’ song as evidence of Dr Dre losing his mojo.

While I think Dr Dre’s critics make worthwhile points, I listen at Dr Dre’s recent contributions

with Kendrick Lemar (Compton and The Recipe) and feel heartened. I listen to Dre's Detox single Kush and feel that certain uncontrollable urge to nod my head and grin. I listen to the whole of Eminem’s Relapse album and Dr Dre’s production and think that he’s still one of the best producers working in music (seriously listen to the beats on that album). I listen to the majority of hip-hop (2 Chainz anyone?) and I believe without a doubt that hiphop still needs the doctor. 

As long as there is still hope left that Dr Dre will release one more album, I am willing to wait patiently. If that album never comes, well, I am left with two outstanding pieces of art and an iPod full of classic songs and albums by other artists which the Doctor has had a heavy hand in crafting.  

@chocoteddyfilms