Bun B - "Get Cha Issue" (mp3)

Pretending that Metacritic is actually accurate or even makes sense most of the time would be a fool's game. Still, now and then I really have to scratch my head if it represents the critical consensus to any degree, like when I noticed that Bun B's II Trill has the highest score of any hip hop album this year so far (just ahead of Wayne and the fucking Cool Kids, but still). That's crazy enough considering that Underground Kingz doesn't even have a metacritic score to compare it to (and you'd really think that got enough reviews to get covered by the site). But really II Trill just kinda sucks. It has most of the same stuff wrong with it that a lot of other major label southern rap albums I've heard this year have had, particularly cookie cutter trend-chasing guests and production, but the difference is that Bun B is an actually good MC who's just on total autopilot, and that it's on Rap-A-Lot, which Scarface put a pretty uncompromising album out on just a few months earlier.

I can't fault the guy for not having any more Pimp C beats to rap over, but the dream team of talentless white producers he's assembled here (J.R. Rotem, Scott Storch, Clinton Sparks) is really amazingly shitty. Even Jazze Pha, who I've always halfheartedly defended from his haters, turns in perhaps the most annoying track of his career on "My Block," a truly impressive feat given his track record. But like I said, the main issue is that Bun is just a zombie on the mic these days, aside from a few thoughtful or heartfelt verses. He used to switch flows and adapt to the beat all the time, but now he's spitting the same flow, the one where he echoes the last three syllables of every line (erry line) in that annoying way every other song (other song).

Of course, my view of II Trill might be slightly tainted by how I first heard it. A couple months ago when I was getting ready to leave for my honeymoon, I took an Amazon gift card I got as a wedding present and used to it try out their mp3 store and stock my iPod up with a bunch of new albums to spend time with on the trip. Bun was the only rap album I got in that haul, and since Amazon doesn't mark the difference between explicit and edited music in big bold text next to every song like iTunes does, I ended up buying a clean version of the album, which totally sucked. Not that Bun or his guests use that much obscenity or it's that key to their lyrics on the album, but it just feels like a really disruptive interference when I'm sitting down to listen to a hip hop album. I like Amazon's mp3 store, but I'm definitely gonna be careful about that shit in the future.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 01, 2008 at 8:16 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.