Saturday, December 11, 2004
Tit 4 Tat
The next single. I always wondered whether the word "tit" would still be censored on the radio if it was in the context of the phrase "tit for tat", I guess we'll see now. It kinda sucks, though, so maybe it won't get spins anyway. Pharrell does one of his awkward wordy hooks and rhymes "bourgeois" with "sushi". Pet theory #4980 about how the Neptunes fell the fuck off: it's all Pharrell now and not enough Chad. I've noticed, on the Neptunes tracks on here and the one on the Jadakiss album, there's a P. Williams songwriting credit but no C. Hugo. Maybe someone with the liner notes for the Snoop album and some of the other stuff they've done recently can verify whether there's any other cases of this. Chad's already proven with the Kenna album that he can do hot shit without P., but I don't think the opposite is true.
Girls
Scratched sample of Run DMC saying "I'm the king of" and Fab saying "girls". Yeah, Fab, you're the king of girls. That shit don't sound right, like you're saying you're the best girl there is. (The first track on Urban Legend has a flip on "King of Rock", too, except with the premise that T.I. is the king of the south, not the king of girls).
Church f/ Charlie Murphy
Darkness as hype man, talking between verses in lieu of a hook, but he doesn't really say anything funny, except maybe when he says "fart". The weird thing is in the lyric sheet in the CD booklet, it has completely different words listed for what Charlie says, I guess from a different take
Can You Hear Me
An attempt at a Jay-Z style introspective, regretful track, but he doesn't have real storytelling skills and he ends every verse by saying "and it's fucked up" in this resigned way that just makes me crack up for some reason.
Holla At Somebody Real f/ Lil Mo
It's ok, but it really didn't live up to my high expectations for a Fab/Mo collab with such a great title.
Ghetto f/ Thara
Tuff Jew unloading a bunch of his stock sounds, "Poppin' Them Thangs"/"Time's Up" muffled piano and "Lean Back" string squiggles, nothing special, but towards the end of an album full of dated, weak ass beats, it feels like a banger by comparison. And you know something's wrong when I'm forced to give props to Scott Storch. Plum Drank worried a while back that "Breathe" was an omen that Fab was going to get fully on the Roc's jock for this album and drop the 'chunky keyboard beats', but almost every other track on this album wouldn't sound out of place on a pre-Blueprint NYC album, it's all very four years ago. Which is kind of nice, in a way, I love that era too, but really this album is garbage. I'm mad I waited too long to take it back to the store to get a full refund.
Po Po f/ Paul Cain and Nate Dogg
Fab's long overdue potshot at the hip hop cops, shuffled to the last track for added effect, some ok storytelling, and really stupid bookend skit parts with I think Clue playing the part of the cop.