Fat Joe - "K.A.R." (mp3)
Fat Joe is, I'm almost certain, nobody's favorite rapper. He's spent over a decade on the B-list, climbing to the absolute top of it without ever becoming an A-lister, which for him would be more or less impossible. He's not a bad rapper, really, and his plainspoken bark can hit almost M.O.P. levels of intensity as is best. But he's spent so much time surrounding himself with much more talented rappers (Big L, Pun, half the other guys in the Khaled's Ocean's Eleven posse cut crew) and scoring most of his big radio hits wiith much bigger stars that he's just permanently a second or third banana.
That said, the guy makes better albums than he usually gets credit for. His last few, particularly Loyalty and Me Myself & I, have all been solid, and even at their worst they usually feature at least a handful of bangers. And unfortunately, his latest, which comes with the unfortunate title The Elephant In The Room and the unfortunate timing of coinciding with a new height of his sometimes hilarious beef with 50 Cent, is one of those albums that just has a few bangers but is far from his best. And they're a little harder to find, too, since the hit off the album, "I Won't Tell," is some soft batch R&B shit, and the two street singles, "The Crackhouse" and "300 Brolice," are both pretty much incoherent, poorly produced garbage.
The album's list of collaborators may look trendy and deliberately of-the-moment, but it bears mentioning that half of those names (DJ Khaled, Cool & Dre, Sean C & LV of American Gangster fame) are guys who've been in Joe's inner circle for years and years, since back when producing a deep cut on a Fat Joe album was their biggest claim to fame. In fact, after all the whining from various past Terror Squad members about Joe failing to promote them enough, I think it's fair to say that he actually seems to have a knack for nurturing talent. But Street Runner, another longtime associate whose biggest claim to fame is still a bunch of Fat Joe tracks, probably puts in the best work here, on "K.A.R." and "The Fugitive," and given the current state of Joe's career, he should really find more outside work if he's ever gonna get some shine.
Fat Joe is, I'm almost certain, nobody's favorite rapper. He's spent over a decade on the B-list, climbing to the absolute top of it without ever becoming an A-lister, which for him would be more or less impossible. He's not a bad rapper, really, and his plainspoken bark can hit almost M.O.P. levels of intensity as is best. But he's spent so much time surrounding himself with much more talented rappers (Big L, Pun, half the other guys in the Khaled's Ocean's Eleven posse cut crew) and scoring most of his big radio hits wiith much bigger stars that he's just permanently a second or third banana.
That said, the guy makes better albums than he usually gets credit for. His last few, particularly Loyalty and Me Myself & I, have all been solid, and even at their worst they usually feature at least a handful of bangers. And unfortunately, his latest, which comes with the unfortunate title The Elephant In The Room and the unfortunate timing of coinciding with a new height of his sometimes hilarious beef with 50 Cent, is one of those albums that just has a few bangers but is far from his best. And they're a little harder to find, too, since the hit off the album, "I Won't Tell," is some soft batch R&B shit, and the two street singles, "The Crackhouse" and "300 Brolice," are both pretty much incoherent, poorly produced garbage.
The album's list of collaborators may look trendy and deliberately of-the-moment, but it bears mentioning that half of those names (DJ Khaled, Cool & Dre, Sean C & LV of American Gangster fame) are guys who've been in Joe's inner circle for years and years, since back when producing a deep cut on a Fat Joe album was their biggest claim to fame. In fact, after all the whining from various past Terror Squad members about Joe failing to promote them enough, I think it's fair to say that he actually seems to have a knack for nurturing talent. But Street Runner, another longtime associate whose biggest claim to fame is still a bunch of Fat Joe tracks, probably puts in the best work here, on "K.A.R." and "The Fugitive," and given the current state of Joe's career, he should really find more outside work if he's ever gonna get some shine.
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on Sunday, April 06, 2008 at 1:39 AM.
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