Yonkers bred rap lyricist Jadakiss is in a hurry. As he preps to drop his sophomore album, Kiss of Death the follow up to his near platinum debut Kiss Tha Game Goodbye, he has his thoughts firmly placed on the business of delivering his new album, with an eye toward the future. “This is the one right here. I know everybody says that, but I don’t plan on really doing this that much longer. I’m trying to go behind the scenes,” says Jadakiss.
However, while his thoughts allude to calling it a career (doubtful), his actions speak to the contrary. The past year has found Jadakiss continually in rap listener’s ears via a slew of stand out, cameo verses. With rap fans notoriously impatient when artists have long hiatus between albums, the importance of a rapper staying on the radar between albums is essential.
Indeed, Kiss of Death is packed with enough variety to please die-hard Jadakiss fans and to invite newcomers to become acquainted with his sound as well. Jadakiss is no longer a brash emcee with far flung aspirations to Hip-Hop’s throne, but a savvy veteran with legit claims to the crown.
Produced by Havoc (Mobb Deep) and featuring soul crooner Anthony Hamilton, the retrospective song and single, “Why” is the album’s most personal song. “It’s just asking why to a lot of things I think a lot of people all over the world might want to know,” says Jadakiss. “Kiss of Death” produced by Red Spyda is a verbal spitfest with Jada’s “.38 revolver flow” anchored by industrial sized bass, distorted low end and a quick paced drum track.
“Written in the Stars” finds Jada tag teaming apocalyptic horns and gut quivering bass with his LOX co-d, Styles P. Throughout the album, almost every rhyme is to be analyzed for fear of missing the punch line, whether subtle or blatant as on the Scott Storch produced 1st single “Times Up” featuring Nate Dogg. Meanwhile, production from both neophyte and established producers including The Neptunes, and Kanye West, raise the album’s temperature to the boiling point.
The Streets’ first album — 2002’s Brit Award and Mercury Prize nominated Original Pirate Material — was a brilliantly witty and original snapshot of 21st century reality. It was also the next step forward for the great tradition of British pop songwriting, which stretches from The Who and The Kinks, to Madness and The Specials, to Blur and Pulp. And a record with the power to unite the disparate tribes of UK dance music — the ravers, the hip-hop heads, the garagistas — in heartfelt appreciation of the joy and pain of the queue for a late-night kebab.
But the appeal of Original Pirate Material didn’t stop at the English Channel. The Streets’ infectious honesty (“You think I’m ghetto? Stop dreaming”) and snappily homespun production techniques have struck a chord with sharp-eared listeners all around the world, to the extent that the album has so far sold more than a million copies — reaching audiences as far afield as Brazil and Japan, and going top 30 in the US.
Two years on, with a whole new generation of sharp-tongued UK MC’s (from Dizzee Rascal to Lady Sovereign) paying tribute to his influence, Mike Skinner is back. And within the first five seconds of his new single “Fit But You Know It” it’s already clear that he’s come up with a worthy successor to Original Pirate Material.
A Grand Don’t Come For Free was made in exactly the same way as its illustrious predecessor. That is, with Skinner working mostly at home, “supplying his own samples” (for example that savage glam-punk guitar on “Fit But You Know It” is not some horribly mangled offshoot of David Bowie’s “Jean Genie”, it’s Mike riffing it up on a borrowed Fender Telecaster), and friends coming back from the pub to contribute occasional background mayhem.
Beneath the bubbling stream-of-consciousness lyrics for which he is justifiably renowned (“and I’m thinkin’... and I’m thinkin...”), The Streets’ uniquely rough-edged production continues to rearrange the building blocks of the last fifteen years of dance music into bold and unexpected new shapes. Acid’s random bleeps, the euphoric piano sound of Italian House.
Jungle’s spiraling sub-bass, Trance’s psychotropic drum surge, UK Garage’s string stabs: They’re all in here somewhere, just in a very different order to the one they originally evolved in. Listen to A Grand Don’t Come For Free for the first time on the bus home or taking a sick dog to the vets, and all the little details will seep into your mind. But put it on through headphones in the early hours of the morning and a whole imaginative new world opens up. Just as it did on first hearing Massive Attack’s Blue Lines or Dizzee Rascal’s Boy In Da Corner — or, indeed, The Streets’ Original Pirate Material.
Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then it’s time to begin...