Theater Of The Mind is Ludacris's sixth album, and at least the third or fourth that he's spent earnestly campaigning for a level of respect he'll never get, whether he deserves it or not. You could probably find a hundred interviews from the past few years where he says the same shit, about how "Chicken & Beer/Red Light District/whatever that last one was called/Theater of The Mind is really going to be a classic that puts me in everyone's top 5" etc. etc. etc. And it's just getting kind of pathetic that the guy can't a) just put out an album and chill or b) actually make a record anywhere near what he hypes it up to be. He's a gifted MC with a quick wit, a dexterous flow, and a deep vocabulary, but he'll never be acknowledged as one of the greats, and the reason why is largely all these earnest bids for canonization. He's officially entered a zone occupied by older journeyman rap stars like Snoop Dogg or Busta Rhymes: even as his fame and fortune have stayed a steady level, fans have completely tuned out what these artists say or do, even when they've got a hit song or briefly make headlines with some controversy or beef. And Luda got to that place twice as fast as Snoop or Busta, which must drive him nuts.

Thing is, Theater Of The Mind is, as I 'liveblogged' here, not that bad. He picks better beats than usual (particularly fron Don Cannon and Toomp), and some of the cutesy song concepts (a track called "Everybody Hates Chris" with Chris Rock talking on it, a track called "Do The Right Thing" with Spike Lee talking on it) actually work. But he still tries to have his cake and eat it too, with a terrible mid-album stretch of R&B collabs followed by a sequence of uninspired attempts at 'event' songs (Premo beat, posse cut with Nas and Jay-Z). This would all be easier to be satisfied with if Luda hadn't been on his best run of guest appearances in years recently, starting with the "I'm So Hood" remix up through "Chopped 'N Skrewed." He still has all the tools at his disposable to make an album as good and as fun as Back For The First Time, but he never will because he's built up some completely wrongheaded idea of a 'classic' album in his mind that he just keeps pursuing to such lengths that he's not even the great singles artist he could have been.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 05, 2008 at 3:13 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.