Lil' Troy - Wanna Be a Baller (ft. Fat Pat, Yungstar, Lil' Will, Big T and HAWK)
Please use the thread to discuss the selections and inform everybody of your voting intentions. A poll will be added at a later date in order to tally votes, once everybody has had the opportunity to listen to all of the selections. If there are specific links to the albums or singles you have nominated (on Youtube, Spotify, etc.) that you would prefer voters to listen to, please post them in this thread. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
Last edited by Skinny on 03/16/2021 20:26; edited 1 time in total
“Silkk the Shocker is maybe the most infuriating rapper of all time. Frustrating to hear and impossible to discern whatever measure of rap talent Master P saw in his little brother. Silkk was always off-beat. On No Limit collabos, including cuts from his own albums, Silkk spit the weakest verses. On solo tracks, he frequently subjected us to his very worst 2Pac impersonation.”
- Justin Charity, writing for Complex in 2014, from an article titled ‘7 Times Silkk the Shocker Couldn’t Find the Beat’
“Silkk the Shocker raps like he doesn’t have a clue on how to rap. No flow, no punch, and no interest. He can’t rap to save his life if he were dangling thirty stories above ground.”
- From a blog called The Schoolboy Review, in a 2012 post titled ‘Special: Top 20 Worst Rappers Ever’ (in which Silkk the Shocker is placed at #2, behind only his brother Master P)
“Like a bow-legged toddler trying to catch a butterfly in the park, Silkk has been unsuccessfully chasing rap beats since 1995, tripping over his feet and falling on his face EVERY SINGLE TIME. It’s almost like he was intentionally off-beat with every single bar. When it comes to timing his cadence with the track, homie ain’t even on the wrong page, he’s in a different library.”
- Edward Bowser, writing for website Soul in Stereo in 2015, from an article titled ‘The 10 Absolutely Worst Rappers of All-Time’
A brief search of the internet finds hip-hop forums full of users who regularly rank Silkk the Shocker as the worst rapper of all-time, and the overwhelming response to these users is agreement. None of his albums can claim a rating of more than 2.85 on RYM, and this album – my favourite – has a meagre 1.91 rating. (According to that site, it is the 85th worst album of the entire 1990s across all genres, a worse record than such luminaries as Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch or Puddle of Mudd were able to put out.) I even found an article in which a Silkk fan felt compelled to defend him under the confessionary headline: ‘True Life: I’m a Silkk the Shocker Fan’, as though he were writing about being a collector of Nazi memorabilia or a person who enjoys having sex with pigs. Travis Scott, a talentless leech of a man whose main strengths are found within his Rolodex, felt comfortable enough with Silkk’s reputation to posit himself as the anti-Silkk, actually rapping, “504 Hot Boyz, minus the bad rap like Silkk the Shocker,” despite Travis Scott being a total fucking hack.
Silkk, to his credit, humbly chalks up any talk of him being a bad rapper to differences of opinion, and notes that all rappers have different styles, including himself. I actually found it quite sad watching an interview with him a few years back in which he attempted to defend himself, because he came across as almost apologetic, offering half-hearted justifications for his music, as though years of hearing himself referred to as one of the worst rappers to ever touch mic had gotten him down. However, he has also been far more celebratory of his own music in other interviews, deliberately referring to his delivery as “the counterclockwise flow” (which is a brilliant description), and recognising that a number of younger rappers regard him highly. (He’s had shout-outs from Migos and Jeezy, Dej Loaf sought him out for a feature, and even critically-acclaimed TDE rapper Isaiah Rashad interpolated one of his choruses and named the subsequent song after him.) At his peak, he was respected by luminaries as varied as Jay-Z, E-40, Cam’ron, Snoop Dogg, Wyclef, and Tupac, but he is still frequently dismissed by many fans as the worst rapper of all-time.
I decided to use this album at the very last minute. I had intended to use it throughout the tournament, as it’s one of my favourite albums of 1999, but a loss in my previous match had me panicking and reaching for more widely acclaimed classics which nonetheless hold less personal importance. The obvious choice was The Roots’ Things Fall Apart, an album full of dense, organic, tasteful beats and decidedly old-school battle raps. It’s a good album. I listened to it a handful of times, but found that I was trying too hard to convince myself of its greatness. There isn’t anything wrong with the album, per se, but I just found it a little boring, a little subdued. (I’ve seen people refer to it as ‘melancholy’, but that’s not really the vibe I get – it just seems very restrained.) Black Thought is a technically precise rapper, but he lacks that distinct sense of personality I look for in rappers, and I actually find that I prefer Malik’s fleeting presence on those earlier Roots albums, because his rapping has a certain unpredictability that Thought’s doesn’t, even if he is – by most established metrics – a worse rapper. I also considered Pharoahe Monch’s Internal Affairs, a record I have loved for many, many years, but in the end I decided that it made more sense to farm it for a single, given the amount of corny extended metaphors Monch uses throughout. Don’t get me wrong, Monch is a virtuosic rapper, and the album has that fantastic Rawkus sound, but the things that made his rapping so thrilling to me as an 18-year-old – the endless semantic fields, vocal gymnastics, and lyrical shock tactics – are actually exhausting to listen to, for an entire album, as a 30-year-old.
I considered other underground classics that might match up well with Operation: Doomsday – Madlib’s first foray into the album format with Lootpack; the lyrical miracle smörgåsbord of Soundbombing II; the landmark debut album by UK rap hero Roots Manuva, whose parallels with DOOM are actually pretty crazy. I considered different Southern rap albums with better reputations – a couple of Cash Money albums which have aged incredibly well; a brilliant 8Ball & MJG album that I shied away from on the basis that there’s already been a (very slightly) better album of theirs nominated elsewhere in this tournament. And, obviously, I considered Jay-Z at his peak. On the off-chance that I actually make it through to the knockout stages, you may see some of these albums crop up in my teams. In the end, though, the pick that kept on calling to me was this: Silkk the Shocker’s Made Man, a much-derided album by a much-derided rapper released on a much-derided label. Don’t get it confused: this is not a pick borne out of humour, contrarianism, revisionism, trolling, spite, attention-seeking, apathy, or anything else you might think of. It’s a genuinely brilliant record, full of life, full of energy, the perfect illustration of the things that made No Limit so great (at their best), and a wonderful advertisement for Silkk’s unique, charming, revolutionary, decidedly off-beat “counterclockwise flow”.
I am a sucker for an off-beat flow. I have already nominated E-40 and Ol’ Dirty Bastard in this tournament. Some of my very favourite rappers of the past decade use an offbeat flow, most noticeably Roc Marciano and Drakeo the Ruler, as do some of my favourite grime rappers, namely Trim and Chronik and President T. My favourite album nominated in this round of matches is Suga Free’s Street Gospel. My other nominee, DOOM, has an unpredictable, angular flow which often has a loose, casual relationship with the beat (at best). Off-beat rapping is a staple of the Dirty South, and the likes of OutKast, Mystikal, Juvenile, among many others, have been known to skirt around the metronome. The recent hip-hop scenes springing up out of California and Michigan in particular are basically defined by rappers who rap off-beat, from Blueface and BlueBucksClan to Sada Baby and Rio Da Yung OG. For whatever reason, I have always appreciated rappers who are able to “write past the margins”, at least in terms of structuring flow. However, there’s rapping off-beat, and then there’s Silkk the Shocker.
Unlike OutKast or DOOM or E-40, Silkk’s rapping doesn’t feel like a virtuosic highwire act, in which the rapper has already mastered traditional rapping before starting to mess around with form and structure in order to prove how rigid other rappers often sound. This is not Jackie Chan using the Drunken Master style in order to throw his opponent off-guard – it’s just a dangerous drunk obliterating his opponent through sheer brute force in spite of his lack of training. Silkk’s off-beat rapping is not something that had to be learned or built from the ground up. It’s as though he has no understanding of how rapping is supposed to work, no knowledge of his forefathers. He treats beats like a child with severe dyspraxia treats the space around them, stumbling clumsily through them, constantly seeming as though he’s about to unravel, uneasy on his feet and unaware of where to tread next. This may sound like a crutch, but it’s quite the opposite. It gives Silkk a freedom that other, ostensibly better rappers simply do not have, and it makes his rapping gleefully unpredictable. Despite his misgivings, he attacks beats wholeheartedly, using vivid snarls and impassioned pleas to get his point across. Sometimes he’ll be rapping in relatively hushed tones, and then suddenly just shout a phrase as though it were a eureka moment. It’s exhilarating. His is rapping based on feeling and instinct, as opposed to technique, even though his technique is perhaps one of the most distinctive of all-time. You see, Silkk is an anti-technician, and all the better for it. I always found the dichotomy between Silkk and No Limit Records a very interesting one: the label was consistently criticised for putting out a never-ending stream of formulaic, soundalike records in the mid- to late-‘90s, often rehashing basslines for use on multiple beats and stuffing albums full of familiar guest artists from their own roster, but Silkk is possibly the least formulaic rapper in history, a rapper whose performance on a given beat would be impossible to guess. (In fairness, for all the flak they received, No Limit had a strong roster of talented and varied rappers: Silkk, Fiend, Mystikal, Mia X, and even a reinvigorated Snoop, whose No Limit Top Dogg album is severely underrated and probably the best thing he ever did outside of Doggystyle. I considered doing a No Limit team at one point, but I didn’t wanna steal kokkinos’ swag.)
However, if all Silkk or this album had going for them was “the counterclockwise flow”, it would be a nonsensical drag. The record is full of great songs, most of which can largely be separated into three categories: Firstly, there are the uptempo, aggressive numbers, largely concerned with hustling and/or flying the No Limit flag, and these songs are often posse cuts featuring other members of the roster (Silkk’s brother Master P and C-Murder, Mr. Serv-On, Mystikal) – these include the frankly insane party-stomper ‘It Ain’t My Fault 2’, the comically minimal ‘This Is 4 My’, and the bouncy, deconstructed funk of ‘If It Don’t Make $’, among others. Then, there are the slower numbers, essentially ballads about the perils of the street life, with soft, melodic beats over which Silkk sounds like an avant-garde Tupac, songs which are brazen in terms of their attempts to sell Silkk as a conflicted, socially conscious soul, but which are also often strangely affecting despite this – there’s ‘It’s Going Around Outside’, featuring a hook from the incredibly named Rico Lumpkins, ‘Ghetto Rain’, on which Silkk and Master P discuss their impoverished upbringing with clear-eyed insightfulness (“private school was way past our budget”), and the Commodores-sampling ‘End of the Road’, which tries so desperately to be ‘One Day’ by UGK that it develops a charm all its own in the process. Lastly, there are the other songs, the playful numbers concerned with partying, fucking, or just being richer than you – Snoop turns up to give album closer ‘Get It Up’ a West Coast cookout vibe, ‘Mr. ‘99’ is a memorable ode to being the man, Silkk and Mia X put a cool spin on the boyfriend-girlfriend back-and-forth on ‘Put It On Something’, and ‘I Want to Be With You’ sees Silkk explaining to some unnamed beau that he can’t see her tonight because he’s married to the studio (many years before ScHoolboy Q covered the exact same ground). For a rapper so often considered the worst of all-time, he was surprisingly versatile, able to rap off-beat about almost anything, and often landing on pearls of wit and wisdom. To hear him speak these days is to listen to a man who articulates his feelings modestly, succinctly and intelligently, and that always came across in his writing. What he lacked in metaphors and wordplay, he more than made up for in thoughtfulness, emotional intelligence, and genuine percipience.
Anyway, I don’t expect this album to be everyone’s cup of tea. For many, that flow will be impossible to vibe with. For others, the cheap and generic nature of these No Limit beats – which, to be clear, are pale imitations of the sorts of things Mannie Fresh was doing at the same time over at Cash Money – will be grating. It’s long and full of guest verses, often from rappers who show up multiple times across the album. Hell, I’m not even sure I think it’s a great album. However, it is one of the most entertaining hip-hop albums I know of, and as such one of my favourites of 1999. Whereas the other albums I considered nominating here tend to have moments that bore me, this album is endlessly listenable, if only to try to figure out exactly what it is Silkk is attempting to do over a given beat. (Seriously, the opening minute of ‘This Is 4 My’ is some of the most bewildering rapping I’ve ever come across, as though somebody put an entirely different beat in his headphones before sending him into the booth. It is a truly incredible performance that needs to be heard to be believed, and I’m still unsure whether it’s genius or just a damning level of incompetence, though I honestly find myself beginning to lean towards the former when he starts slowly catching up to the track’s tempo.) For me, Silkk is a far more entertaining rapper than, say, Black Thought, if certainly not a better one. But regardless of whether his flow and delivery are sometimes unintentionally hilarious, to call a man this unique and this engaging ‘the worst rapper of all-time’ is clearly ridiculous. There are so many cookie-cutter rappers around who stick to structures that we are all already over-familiar with that it seems brutally unfair to denigrate a true maverick whose unorthodox style was completely outside of the box. Even now, with a renewed interest in off-beat rapping, nobody takes it as far as Silkk did. All hail Silkk the Shocker, not the worst rapper of all-time! _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
I remember back in 7th grade we used to quote the "SHOT COLL-AHH!" hook all the time and actually got in trouble for it on occassion. Fucking classic.
Anyways love this matchup, even as basic bitch I went this round, now kind of kicking myself for not going with the Shaq Attack (I guess nothing could compare to his cross-platform magnum opus Shaq-Fu that came out a year later). Only a bit dissapointed not to see Slick Rick this go-around
I love the fact you've represented two completely different but undoubtedly brilliant strands of Bay Area rap with the album picks. Tragedy Khadafi is a legend, and it's always nice to be reminded of his existence. Then, of course, UGK are basically my favourite rap group, and 'Pocket Full of Stones' is one of a handful of early masterpieces - sinister, musical, unapologetic, one of those records that is just effortlessly cool, introducing flows and dialect that owed very little to New York or Cali. It was utilising that slowed down, Screwed up aesthetic, but doing so coincidentally - both camps came to that sound at similar times, and each influenced the other massively. It's basically the genesis of the Dirty South, a real history lesson that is still full of life and full of bravado, a deeply authentic music.
With my picks, I tried to bring a sense of fun. I've already talked a lot about that Silkk the Shocker album, but I really have fallen in love with it - it's just so fun, and far better than most would have you believe. Whilst it might not be a great album, it's definitely a great listen. Then, DOOM's debut, for all its barely concealed sadness, is his most freewheeling, relatable, conversational release - there's a breeziness to his sampling here that gives the record a very light feel, and he takes clear delight in finding his voice in real time. I actually wrote a long piece about this album and its parallels to Roots Manuva's debut in the wake of DOOM's death, which I may post here later.
The singles were no-brainers, to be honest. 'Simon Says' is completely ageless, with that Godzilla sample acting as one of music's greatest ever intros, letting everyone in the club know what's coming. It's classic hardcore New York curbstomping shit, but with a sense of pop nous not always associated with that. His delivery is brilliant, and the way that he uses a different cadence on virtually every line, each distinct and memorable, means that even the verses feel like series of iconic hooks. I'm not sure whether 'wheel-ups' are a thing in the States; basically, if a crowd starts going mental to a tune, the DJ spins it back and starts it again. This phenomenon is largely confined to grime and UK garage and drum'n'bass, but 'Simon Says' is a song that is guaranteed multiple wheel-ups whenever it's played. It's just fucking gnarly.
Then there's 'Wanna Be a Baller', an all-star Houston posse cut on which every rapper brings their best, an aspirational ode to escaping poverty - but not, importantly, escaping the hood - over a mournful, melancholy 'Little Red Corvette' sample, made more tragic by the knowledge that only Yungstar is still alive today of everyone who performs on the song. (Lil' Troy is also alive, but oddly enough he does not perform on it, nor on most songs from his debut album. He was a bit of a Houstonian DJ Khaled figure, an executive producer who was able to bring others together to enact his vision; Scarface credits Troy for being the first person to take a chance on him, years earlier, but subsequently spent much of the 2000s making Troy diss records and suing him for hundreds of thousands of dollars. As a further aside, Prince liked this song so much that he allowed them to use the sample for free. Prince: the anti-Don Henley.) Anyway, as cestuneblague alludes to, that chorus is just undeniable, catchy enough to become a playground mantra but also otherworldly and celebratory and deeply, deeply human. Despite its 'one hit wonder' status, it's no throwback novelty record. The shit hits deep.
As for Slick Rick, he's been in and out of various teams I've picked throughout. He's one of my favourite rappers, and it's his best album, but it's super inconsistent, it has a forgettable run of songs in the middle, and his vocals are mixed so low that you have to strain to hear what he's saying most of the time. It's still on my list because the highs are just glorious, and if I get through he'll definitely make an appearance in some form. Regardless, I really love this matchup a lot. Honestly, this and the 2006 vs. 2016 match are my two favourites of the whole round. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
Need to get on the Silkk the Shocker and Mac Mall records, but I'd say Operation: Doomsday and 93 'til Infinity are just about evenly matched, and picking who has the best singles here is surprisingly difficult. Great to see Intelligent Hoodlum on the board though.
I'm feeling I'll give the Silkk/Mac Mall records a back-to-back listen and figure out which one I prefer. Everything else seems really balanced. Solid stuff all around.
Yeesh! I appreciate that you went down swinging, Skinny! BUT... I predict '93 is going to remain undefeated. Just two killer albums! I'd never heard of Mac Mall before, but it's crazy solid and pretty much bullet proof teamed with '93 Til Infinity. Another one-two punch from da CUB leaving Skinny with a "Pocket Full Of Stones." Time to dredge the lake.
Souls of Mischief - 93 'til Infinity is another entry in the -embarassingly long- catalogue of classic albums I respect but only mildly - if at all - like. Especially when it comes to rapping and lyrics, I can't remember a single thing five minutes after the album is over, there's nothing that stands out and sticks with me - though it's fine during the listening process. Furthermore, another complaint would be that I really struggle to tell who is who while they are rapping. On the other hand, this means the chemistry of the group is on a very high level and that's something rather obvious from the get go. The main attraction of the album is definitely the production. Jazzy influenced, smooth, funky and chill with a touch of playfulness and a carefree attitude, it manages to create a specific atmosphere and maintain it for the entire running time of the album.
To sum it up, it's ok, but I suspect pretty much everyone else will like it more than I do.
Next one is gonna be Mac Mall - Illegal Business?.
Mac Mall - Illegal Business? is another album that would be classified as West Coast - meaning that some extra points for team chemistry are due - but other than that doesn't share as many similarities with the previous album as one might expect. Production is once again the centre of attention. Slow and heavy, soul inspired and synth based, overall super groovy and extremely addictive. And of course its achievement doesn't limit itself to the borders of this album or even the West Coast scene, you gotta recognise it's been highly and widely influential on many future attempts. The highly energetic rapping forms a nice contrast and as a result further emphasises it and the lyrics are so effective at getting you even deeper in the mood ("Versatile the style that I'm usin I comin sick with these my cutty I'm confusin Spittin all this shit that my patnas say is loco But when I do a ruthless switch them fools just don't know I might get on my knees and break these fools on the docs Or should I get my gat and go pull a heist But everything is fair when a young nigga shoots it").
To sum it up, I would rank this massively ahead of 93 'til Infinity.
Next one is gonna be MF DOOM - Operation: Doomsday.
Intended to continue with Operation: Doomsday,but I'm not ready to comment on MF DOOM -maybe I will skip it altogether, I don't need to re-listen to it to make up my mind, I already know how I'm feeling towards it, it's been one of my go-to albums for ages -, so I'm gonna reverse the order and continue with Silkk the Shocker - Made Man. Skinny's reviews could convince you for a lot of things, but in this case I really didn't need any persuasion. His rapping is as eccentric as it gets. I can understand some of the criticisms, but I don't know, I somehow have the impression that were he to emerge on the scene today, he wouldn't be as mocked, the modern direction of rapping seems to suit him slightly more. The "counterclockwise flow" analogy is a creative way to put it, though slightly inaccurate, as it implies there's a method to his madness, which I failed to discern, the man is simply a lunatic, he is all over the place. When a rapper dominates an album like that, it's usually a bad idea to fill it with guests. Here this wasn't a problem to the slightest, quite the contrary actually, they give you some valuable room to breathe before the next punch of the man hits even harder. The production is also questionable and bound to raise a debate, it seems to be going everywhere or nowhere depending on your perception. I would argue in favor of the former (the variety is incredible, it grabs you from the first second and never lets you loose, it's impossible to stop before it's over) and as a result thorougly enjoyed it - but I'm pretty sure I am in the minority here. Also, it's 70 minutes long and it still feels desperately short, give me some more.
To sum it up, I would shockingly rank this as about equal to Illegal Business? and way ahead of 93 'til Infinity.
Next one is gonna be either the singles or most likely a short reference to MF DOOM and a quick summation of where the two teams are standing so far.
Not much to say about MF DOOM - Operation: Doomsday, it's still too early (I don't mean it's too early to judge the album properly and that my opinion could change in the future, just that it's too early since his passing to be able to talk about it comfortably), but it could be his most complete and satisfying album, it contains everything you expect from him and even more: cartoonish themes, original and slightly twisted delivery, witty one-liners, plus a softer human side that we don't get to see that often.
To sum it up, by far my favorite album of the matchup and 1999 has all but locked victory.
Next one is gonna be the singles.
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