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Slap-Boxing With Jesus

Thank You, Kanye

First off, it should be noted that if you haven’t heard Finding Forever and plan to, or you don’t want to hear the highly opinionated thoughts of this blogger, you may want to visit one of my blogging brethren’s posts, lest you think that this is nothing more than (more) biased bullshit from me [1].

Anyways, last Friday was an unusually busier day for me on the Internets, as I was able to grab four albums I was actually enthused about attaining: two mixtapes starring “Dead Presidents” producer (and severely underrated and overlooked beatsmith) Ski Beatz (which I actually found on his MySpace page for free, if you’re interested in what samples were used in some of his best beats) and T-Dot rhyme slinger Kardinal Offishall, the latest release by Ski’s protégés Camp Lo [2] and G.O.O.D. Music underling Common [3]. While taking my mother out over the weekend, I had a chance to listen to all of them, and while I found Ski’s opus to be the most enthralling of the bunch (rappers take note: that is how mixtapes should be done), I found myself stuck on Finding Forever more often than I’m typically accustomed to, listening to the damn thing with equal parts disbelief, anger and frustration.

Now before some random-ass c-boy jumps on the comments section barking wild gibberish about this being nothing more than a different color of the same shit [4] (and not to sound like a fake-ass hip-hop fan like Oprah), understand that I have the utmost respect and appreciation for Common Sense. Songs like “Invocation,” 1, 2 Many,” “The 6th Sense and “The Questions,” among others, have gotten endless burn in my iPod, and I was even slightly thrilled when I heard he was running with Silk Shirts West, as he’d finally get that long-overdue recognition. Hell, when I first caught wind of “The Corner,” I instantly thought that it was Lonnie’s Midwestern equivalent of “Where I’m From,” a classic (yes I said it) heatrock in its own right. So, like my Southern blogging brother from another mother Mr. Burnett lamented recently, I’d never guess that Common would ever deliver something this underwhelming.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, seeing as how Common on a bad day will usually still shit on your favorite rapper on their best. But after listening to him name-drop the likes of Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, it’s glaringly apparent that he took the Jay-Z, “fuck this shit” route in rap. And why should he care about rap anyways? Unless you’re pushing ringtones, there’s no money to be made in that area, which is why you see Lonnie popping up more often than not in television shows and movies. If I were a rapper (and thank Xenu I’m not), I’d drop the mic for some Hollywood guap in a heartbeat.

Asinine lyrics, lazy similes and shitty metaphors aside, it’s almost as if the beats of “the new Primo” (that’s really some blasphemous shit, in my opinion) almost willed Lonnie to dumb down his lyrics. The better productions on the shit (and that’s not saying much) sound softer than a Twinkie filling, as Kanye tries to adopt a Dilla-esque sound, spectacularly crashing and burning each and every time. Ironically, one of the better songs, “The Game,” has Kanye trying to mimic the old Primo while Primo himself is scratching the hook.

Then again, it’s not like I’d expect anything substantially great from Silk Shirts nowadays. A while back when I stated that he hasn’t done anything thrilling since crushing his face in that car accident, the humps on this site were up in arms, trying to convince me that his work on the albums of his moolies Consequence and Rhymefest were instant vintage, to which I replied that since he could give three shits about them because it was pretty much expected that they weren’t going to sell records, he tossed them a couple throwaways as if to lessen the impact of their impending failure. Now that it’s been proven that he can even make a legitimate rapper sound like a weenie, I struggle to see how I’m the biased asshole now.

[1] Which is really not the case.

[2] I know, I know. One of these days I’ll actually support these artists. One day.

[3] Think about it: Lonnie’s boss is younger than he is. Even I don’t see the humor in that at all.

[4] Odd, I always thought that those diatribes are all the same, redundant thing also. Go figure.

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