RDAT Tournament – Game 5 – Outside NYC Bracket

No. 2 – Kayne West – The College Dropout vs. No. 3 – Redman – Whut? Thee Album

To be honest, I hoped for more. When creating the initial list of RDAT albums, I knew I would hold a spot for Redman’s debut. If only to ensure Jersey was represented.

Whenever I’m asked where I’m from, I proudly say New Jersey. A further answer usually includes something like, “The northern part, near the George Washington Bridge and New York City.” But there’s never been a point in my life where I’ve said I’m from New York. I’d like to think Reggie Noble provided me with some confidence to represent my home state as he did.

After Red had made appearances on some EPMD tracks, Whut? Thee Album wass released in September 1992 with the lead single ‘Blow Your Mind’ reaching No. 1 on the U.S. Hot Rap Singles according to Wikipedia, and No. 1 in cars and boomboxes throughout the Garden State…or at least my T-neck of the woods.

Mr. Noble is from Newark, which is about 30 minutes south from my hometown, but the distance between the two is a lot farther than that. The closest we got to ‘da hood’ would be Paterson; about 15 minutes away and culturally famous for Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of Joe Clark in Lean on Me.

My personal visits to Paterson were minimal with the occasional trip on a bus full of athletes to a sporting event and the even-more infrequent visits to a small piece of property my mother had purchased. The latter was more to assist her cleaning it up and she prepared to flip it. I don’t know what happened with that endeavor, just like I couldn’t tell much about the city itself.

I can tell you that you that Redman was bumped from every car in every hood. The beats, which he earned production credits on for every track except ‘Hardcore’, were thick with samples from James Brown, Gap Band, Sly & The Family Stone and a lot of Parliament. The result is something that fit in with the current sound while harking back to your parents’ LP’s.

What he really harked back to was the excessive use of marijuana seemingly allowed without persecution when George Clinton and P-Funk were at their peak. Clinton grew up in Plainfield, about 20 miles south of Newark. Both are in Essex County and the entire album feels slightly like a tribute to the legacy Clinton created.

He would have created a stir if ‘How to Roll a Blunt’ was released today. It wasn’t released as a single, but became  classic to a cult of ‘users’ that used the instructions to do exactly what the song’s title describes. He wasn’t the first rapper to talk about smoking weed and he most certainly wouldn’t be the last, but he’s the only one who got Hollywood and mainstream media to pay for his supply.

How High isn’t a great film, but it wasn’t supposed to be. It was the result of the universal crossover appeal of the Blackout album and subsequent tour by Red and Method Man. It wouldn’t be too long after when Reggie allowed MTV into his home for an episode of ‘Cribs’, a show that was intended for artists to show off their wealth. Instead, Red shows off a two-bed apartment, only made funnier by the camera shots and his running commentary. His humor is a staple of his lyrics, so much so that Fox gave him and Meth a sitcom.

I’ll type that again. In 2004, executives at Fox green-lit and produced a 30-minute situation comedy starting Redman and Method Man.

Of course it didn’t last the full 13 episodes, especially since the stars “publicly expressing disappointment with the show while it was still airing.” But regardless that the writers didn’t think to incorporate the characters that Reggie Noble and Clifford Smith had spent over a decade crafting into the public persona, the sheer fact that an exec actually considered this a viable moneymaker only returns back to a memorable quote on De La Soul’s The Grind Date.

You know what I mean? Rap outsold crack
You know, so rap….or hip-hop culture
However you wanna dice it, you know what I’m sayin’
It’s the most powerful drug there is, man
It changed corporate America, it changed the way you feel about me
It change the way I, I do my thing now
Busta was the one who came out, on the award show and said that
Hip-hop provides jobs for people who don’t even love the shit
I mean, come one man, I mean what else is there to say?!

I say that if ‘Time 4 Sum Aksion’ was released today, it’s not a hit but it would get some play. The B-Real sample and the heavy bass ride for about 20 seconds; the radio DJ in me sees that as time to talk over the beat before the track begins with the famous Michael Buffer line of ‘Let’s get ready to rumble!’. The little pauses he uses, from counting a 1-2-3 pin or introducing the hi-hat, allow the listener to stay with this fast paced song. A somewhat opposite method is used by Kanye West on the first song on The College Dropout, but it’s effective just the same.

‘We Don’t Care’ is prefaced by DeRay Davis doing a spot-on Bernie Mac impersonation, asking Kanye to “do a little something beautiful, something that the kids are going to love when they hear it.” His response is a song that stands as a flagpole the entire album will stand behind – that there’s a different struggle going on for young black youths. One where higher education is pointless, especially in the face of easy money to be made via drug-dealing. That those that are working honest jobs “can’t shine off $6.55”, therefore they hustle and do other things to make more money.

The drug game bulimic, it’s hard to get weight
Some niggas money is homo, it’s hard to get straight
But we gonna keep baking till the day we get cake
And we don’t care what people say

He goes on to admonish governments for stopping after-school programs for inner-city students and admonishing those same students that realize there’s more money to be made selling on the street corner than staying inside the classroom, especially when money is needed to keep lights on and help sustain homes without fathers. It’s a lot, but West manages to pack all that into four minutes and include a chorus of kids singing, “We wasn’t supposed to make it past 25. Joke’s on you, we’re still alive”.

It’s followed by the second of eight skits on the album, but one that holds up to this day. I still laugh when Davis comes back and takes Kanye’s graduation tickets back, telling him, “I’m trying to get you out here with these white people and this how you gonna do me? You know what, you’s a nigga. And I don’t mean that in no nice way.” Where most skits on rap albums serve as pauses for something funny or sexual, most on The College Dropout are musical transitions that strengthen the overall product.

This was a product that had been heard. I watched ‘Def Poetry’ on HBO and remember when Mos Def introduced ‘the future of hip-hop”.

What’s truly iconic about this is the fact that he tells EVERYONE exactly who he is within the first five seconds of being on stage. Yes, it sets up his poem, but it’s a manifesto that he’s stayed true to even in other poems he spit. That ‘All Falls Down’ has a foundation from these lines is one thing, but to match the music to fit the tone is what makes Kanye a musical genius. The combination of the social messages he’s spitting on tracks he produced, along with the lyrical wordplay, is unlike anything that was out at the time before or since not even by himself. It’s just one track full of them on a standout album