Styles P. f/ The Alchemist - "All I Know Is Pain" (mp3)
Counting the May release of The Ghost Sessions, Styles P. has released 3 albums in the past 12 months, after the four year lull following his first album, 2002's A Gangster And A Gentleman. Styles himself doesn't seem to count Sessions, referring to his latest album as his 3rd, but he should, since it's a pretty solid album of all original beats with some really good guest spots. But much in the same way that Prodigy has been referring to the great Return Of The Mac as just a mixtape despite it being possibly the best album he's made in a decade or so, Styles has moved on pretty quicky from both Sessions and last year's Time Is Money, which sat on the shelf so long that he probably forgot all the songs on it by the time Interscope quietly released it, and then released him from his contract and allowed him to make the inevitable move to Koch.
The Koch album that Styles P. has been hyping up all year comes bogged down with possibly the worst album title of the year: Super Gangster (Extraordinary Gentleman). I'm not a big fan of Stillmatic-style reminders of an artist's past records to begin with, but when the original album being referred to is just a faintly remembered album that went Gold years and years ago and not an iconic classic, and had kind of a crappy movie-referencing title to begin with, it's just laughably ungainly, and that's not even taking into account the clunky paranthetical punctuation. But once you get past the ugly-ass title, the album is still barely as good as Ghost Sessions, mostly because the latter was handicapped by the 3 awful rock remixes tacked onto the end.
There's some really off-the-bat bad ideas on the album, like the song with Ray J where he's actually even more annoying than he was on "One Wish," the dire club rap of "Look At Her," and the song "Green Peace Of Paper," where Styles says the title over and over in the chorus and it sounds like he's talking about Greenpeace (there's also a line later on the album about "my whiteboy friend" but it kind of sounds like he's saying "my white boyfriend"). But after a rough start, the second half the album picks up with some good guest appearances (Beanie Sigel and Ghostface and the rest of the LOX), the awesome "Da 80's," and some actually pretty funny interludes by a guy credited as "Comedian Tony Roberts" (which makes me wander if Styles is including his title with his name, or if that is his name, like Cedric The Entertainer). Hopefully he'll be a little discriminating with his next album, which, seriously, is going to be a sequel to Time Is Money called Money Is Time. And I'm sure the one after that will be called Super Money, Extraordinary Time or something like that.
Counting the May release of The Ghost Sessions, Styles P. has released 3 albums in the past 12 months, after the four year lull following his first album, 2002's A Gangster And A Gentleman. Styles himself doesn't seem to count Sessions, referring to his latest album as his 3rd, but he should, since it's a pretty solid album of all original beats with some really good guest spots. But much in the same way that Prodigy has been referring to the great Return Of The Mac as just a mixtape despite it being possibly the best album he's made in a decade or so, Styles has moved on pretty quicky from both Sessions and last year's Time Is Money, which sat on the shelf so long that he probably forgot all the songs on it by the time Interscope quietly released it, and then released him from his contract and allowed him to make the inevitable move to Koch.
The Koch album that Styles P. has been hyping up all year comes bogged down with possibly the worst album title of the year: Super Gangster (Extraordinary Gentleman). I'm not a big fan of Stillmatic-style reminders of an artist's past records to begin with, but when the original album being referred to is just a faintly remembered album that went Gold years and years ago and not an iconic classic, and had kind of a crappy movie-referencing title to begin with, it's just laughably ungainly, and that's not even taking into account the clunky paranthetical punctuation. But once you get past the ugly-ass title, the album is still barely as good as Ghost Sessions, mostly because the latter was handicapped by the 3 awful rock remixes tacked onto the end.
There's some really off-the-bat bad ideas on the album, like the song with Ray J where he's actually even more annoying than he was on "One Wish," the dire club rap of "Look At Her," and the song "Green Peace Of Paper," where Styles says the title over and over in the chorus and it sounds like he's talking about Greenpeace (there's also a line later on the album about "my whiteboy friend" but it kind of sounds like he's saying "my white boyfriend"). But after a rough start, the second half the album picks up with some good guest appearances (Beanie Sigel and Ghostface and the rest of the LOX), the awesome "Da 80's," and some actually pretty funny interludes by a guy credited as "Comedian Tony Roberts" (which makes me wander if Styles is including his title with his name, or if that is his name, like Cedric The Entertainer). Hopefully he'll be a little discriminating with his next album, which, seriously, is going to be a sequel to Time Is Money called Money Is Time. And I'm sure the one after that will be called Super Money, Extraordinary Time or something like that.
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on Friday, December 14, 2007 at 12:08 PM.
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