There are many distinguished crime writers in hip-hop, and while there are a few who stand as some of the best artists working in contemporary music today, there are none, as far as I know, who have compared to Scarface, aka Brad Jordan, over the long haul in terms of consistent, quality output. (Ghostface Killah seems to be the only true contender.) While calling Scarface the Jim Thompson of hip-hop would probably be a little far-fetched, I'm not quite sure if a comparison of that nature is all that inaccurate. Scarface's narratives are undoubtedly much more coherent and far less surrealistic, over the top and experimental than Thompson's, but there is something of the same kind of extraordinary bleakness. Both Scarface and Thompson seem to have an understanding why someone would commit a crime, and certainly possess a bone-deep fear of going completely insane. There is also the same way with one hell of a confusing, nonplussing, ultimately brilliant ending. When I first started reading Thompson, about two weeks ago, I immediately thought of Scarface and this album.
Scarface creates a persona of a Houston coke dealer throughout the whole album. The character is conveniently named Brad, Scarface, Mr. Scarface, and occasionally Akshen, pronounced "Action" and Scarface's original nom de rap. Scarface creates someone who is someone you would never, ever, ever want to mess around with. I mean, this is not some idiotic, cartoonish Supa-Gangsta Drug Lord - this guy is a cold, damaged nutjob whose tortured conscience won't keep him from shooting you to death in five seconds.
Of course, he shoots tons of people, fucks bitches, deals coke and does all the things that a gangsta rapper does in song. In that way, this album is the same old story.
However, the difference between your violent, run-of-the-mill clumsy dumbass gangsta MC and Scarface is that Scarface simply does it way the hell better on all fronts.
His eye for the telling detail is remarkable, and he manages to craft his lyrics so that they flow seemingly without any effort. But all the while, they keep building until he pretty much has you reeled in by the time the first verse is over. The effect is like a verbal film: like all true storytellers, Scarface sets the scene like a master director. Lyrics like this sound like every gangsta manifesto and tough-guy threat you've ever heard, except that this time...you know the guy means it:
Boy, you should've known not to fuck with me, bitch
Brothers like me are making mortuaries rich.
So if you got something that you think you wanna prove,
You better prove it now, cause you don't get a second chance, dude.
One chance is all you get,
And if I beat you to the draw, that's it...
Get your momma's black dress and call your family -
It's gonna be a murder, my reason:
Insanity.
I don't know about you, but those are some of the most fatalistic, truly scary lyrics I've seen that still manage to stay out of the realm of parody. As rendered in Scarface's paranoid, coldly contemptuous Southern bark of a voice, the effect is authoritative.
If the lyrics haven't completely hooked you yet, the beats will. The beats on this album are monotonous, but not monotonous in the way that most modern rap is (e.g. that unspeakably irritating rat-a-tat-a-tatatatatatatatatat digitized click pattern that seems like it appears in every fucking radio hit these days). Rather, they work together to achieve a style. This was made in 1991, and so sampling practices weren't quite as insanely stringent as they later became. This allowed the in-house producers at Rap-a-Lot Records (Bido, Crazy C, etc.) to create and maintain a signature sound for this album. '70's chicken-scratch guitars, thudding, insanely catchy lo-fi rhythms and loops, and rich, tasty Hammond organs that sound like pure Southern soul define a lot of the instrumental textures on display here. As constructed by the Rap-a-Lot guys, the beats are almost all upbeat, swaggering, smoky, thick and really, really funky. The secret of the album is that, combined with Scarface's amazingly convincing, relentlessly nasty and cruel yet totally smooth delivery, the beats find their context and fill out his narratives. It's one sound, but it's a great one. Basically, this album takes you to a Houston ghetto, and while it's obvious your lily-white ass wouldn't want to live there, the parched, sandy sourced-from-vinyl sounds and Scarface's fluid, sneering drawl can make you imagine what it's like to be in that tense, scorching, dry and dusty environment. It's genuinely cinematic.
Another reason the album works so well is that the sequencing of the album tells a loose 45-minute story of sorts. It's not quite a concept album, and I doubt it was intended to be one, but that's the effect.
With "Mr. Scarface," Scarface explains that he's back after laying low for a while; then, he gets involved in a shootout after getting burned, and gets involved in another shootout that he survives just after screwing some unfortunate lady. The next song is devoted to a few verses sketching out what he thinks of as his sexual prowess: it's the weakest song on the album, but an unparalleled (and really, really funny) description of macho-man misogynism, and it provides some needed comic relief on one extremely bleak, unpleasant album. The next three songs are riveting lyrical bloodbaths with strong undercurrents of insanity throughout. Then there's the famous, if slightly too repetitive classic "Diary of a Madman," which leaves Ozzy and the Gravediggaz where they belong at the drive-in and takes the listener straight to the mental ward instead.
Much of the rest of the album continues on like this, though it is slower, more reflective and more laid-back than what came before on Side 1. Some of the details here on Side 2 blindside you with their clarity and fatalism. "Good Girl Gone Bad," featuring the much-sampled drum loop from Funkadelic's "Good Old Music," gets to the point of all drug deals with two lines: "Now it's the time for the testing of the dope, to see if it's flour, sheetrock, or some powdered soap." The same song features Scarface's tale of how he came to adopt another man's son - through shooting the father. Here, too, the lyrical tone and detail are simply astonishing: "Took him to the bayou. 'Your ass has got to go for that bullshit you tried, bro.' 'But what about my son?' 'I got him. He's in real good hands.' He closed his eyes - then I shot him. Now his son is calling me dad..." And "Money and the Power" features the most telling lines on the album, where he mentions working at McDonald's. It may be gangsta-rap, but this is about as far away from glamour as it gets. It's touches like this that make the album feel all so much more convincing than most other examples in the genre. The reflective moments, too, always excel: "A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die," intelligently placed as the penultimate song on the album, cycles through loops of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" and "What's Going On" while Scarface quietly tells a story of ghetto violence circling in on itself in unspeakably cruel and absurdly pointless ways.
There is also one hell of an ending. The last song, "I'm Dead," is as close to O. Henry as any gangsta rapper got, which is notable enough. It closes the album on the most bewildered, but resigned note possible. Scarface wakes up one morning, observes a neighborhood fight, tries to call his mother, and then gradually realizes that he's dead. It ends with him seeing his mother softly kiss his corpse in the coffin.
This album is a classic - hard, scarred, paranoid, furious, funky and brutal. It has its objectives and achieves them.
Final Verdict: Scarface will always be a complete professional. This album is harder-core than a thousand generic '80's punks and it is much more of a genuine artistic statement about gangster life than that ridiculously terrible shitball Brian de Palma movie everyone loves so much.
Scarface creates a persona of a Houston coke dealer throughout the whole album. The character is conveniently named Brad, Scarface, Mr. Scarface, and occasionally Akshen, pronounced "Action" and Scarface's original nom de rap. Scarface creates someone who is someone you would never, ever, ever want to mess around with. I mean, this is not some idiotic, cartoonish Supa-Gangsta Drug Lord - this guy is a cold, damaged nutjob whose tortured conscience won't keep him from shooting you to death in five seconds.
Of course, he shoots tons of people, fucks bitches, deals coke and does all the things that a gangsta rapper does in song. In that way, this album is the same old story.
However, the difference between your violent, run-of-the-mill clumsy dumbass gangsta MC and Scarface is that Scarface simply does it way the hell better on all fronts.
His eye for the telling detail is remarkable, and he manages to craft his lyrics so that they flow seemingly without any effort. But all the while, they keep building until he pretty much has you reeled in by the time the first verse is over. The effect is like a verbal film: like all true storytellers, Scarface sets the scene like a master director. Lyrics like this sound like every gangsta manifesto and tough-guy threat you've ever heard, except that this time...you know the guy means it:
Boy, you should've known not to fuck with me, bitch
Brothers like me are making mortuaries rich.
So if you got something that you think you wanna prove,
You better prove it now, cause you don't get a second chance, dude.
One chance is all you get,
And if I beat you to the draw, that's it...
Get your momma's black dress and call your family -
It's gonna be a murder, my reason:
Insanity.
I don't know about you, but those are some of the most fatalistic, truly scary lyrics I've seen that still manage to stay out of the realm of parody. As rendered in Scarface's paranoid, coldly contemptuous Southern bark of a voice, the effect is authoritative.
If the lyrics haven't completely hooked you yet, the beats will. The beats on this album are monotonous, but not monotonous in the way that most modern rap is (e.g. that unspeakably irritating rat-a-tat-a-tatatatatatatatatat digitized click pattern that seems like it appears in every fucking radio hit these days). Rather, they work together to achieve a style. This was made in 1991, and so sampling practices weren't quite as insanely stringent as they later became. This allowed the in-house producers at Rap-a-Lot Records (Bido, Crazy C, etc.) to create and maintain a signature sound for this album. '70's chicken-scratch guitars, thudding, insanely catchy lo-fi rhythms and loops, and rich, tasty Hammond organs that sound like pure Southern soul define a lot of the instrumental textures on display here. As constructed by the Rap-a-Lot guys, the beats are almost all upbeat, swaggering, smoky, thick and really, really funky. The secret of the album is that, combined with Scarface's amazingly convincing, relentlessly nasty and cruel yet totally smooth delivery, the beats find their context and fill out his narratives. It's one sound, but it's a great one. Basically, this album takes you to a Houston ghetto, and while it's obvious your lily-white ass wouldn't want to live there, the parched, sandy sourced-from-vinyl sounds and Scarface's fluid, sneering drawl can make you imagine what it's like to be in that tense, scorching, dry and dusty environment. It's genuinely cinematic.
Another reason the album works so well is that the sequencing of the album tells a loose 45-minute story of sorts. It's not quite a concept album, and I doubt it was intended to be one, but that's the effect.
With "Mr. Scarface," Scarface explains that he's back after laying low for a while; then, he gets involved in a shootout after getting burned, and gets involved in another shootout that he survives just after screwing some unfortunate lady. The next song is devoted to a few verses sketching out what he thinks of as his sexual prowess: it's the weakest song on the album, but an unparalleled (and really, really funny) description of macho-man misogynism, and it provides some needed comic relief on one extremely bleak, unpleasant album. The next three songs are riveting lyrical bloodbaths with strong undercurrents of insanity throughout. Then there's the famous, if slightly too repetitive classic "Diary of a Madman," which leaves Ozzy and the Gravediggaz where they belong at the drive-in and takes the listener straight to the mental ward instead.
Much of the rest of the album continues on like this, though it is slower, more reflective and more laid-back than what came before on Side 1. Some of the details here on Side 2 blindside you with their clarity and fatalism. "Good Girl Gone Bad," featuring the much-sampled drum loop from Funkadelic's "Good Old Music," gets to the point of all drug deals with two lines: "Now it's the time for the testing of the dope, to see if it's flour, sheetrock, or some powdered soap." The same song features Scarface's tale of how he came to adopt another man's son - through shooting the father. Here, too, the lyrical tone and detail are simply astonishing: "Took him to the bayou. 'Your ass has got to go for that bullshit you tried, bro.' 'But what about my son?' 'I got him. He's in real good hands.' He closed his eyes - then I shot him. Now his son is calling me dad..." And "Money and the Power" features the most telling lines on the album, where he mentions working at McDonald's. It may be gangsta-rap, but this is about as far away from glamour as it gets. It's touches like this that make the album feel all so much more convincing than most other examples in the genre. The reflective moments, too, always excel: "A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die," intelligently placed as the penultimate song on the album, cycles through loops of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" and "What's Going On" while Scarface quietly tells a story of ghetto violence circling in on itself in unspeakably cruel and absurdly pointless ways.
There is also one hell of an ending. The last song, "I'm Dead," is as close to O. Henry as any gangsta rapper got, which is notable enough. It closes the album on the most bewildered, but resigned note possible. Scarface wakes up one morning, observes a neighborhood fight, tries to call his mother, and then gradually realizes that he's dead. It ends with him seeing his mother softly kiss his corpse in the coffin.
This album is a classic - hard, scarred, paranoid, furious, funky and brutal. It has its objectives and achieves them.
Final Verdict: Scarface will always be a complete professional. This album is harder-core than a thousand generic '80's punks and it is much more of a genuine artistic statement about gangster life than that ridiculously terrible shitball Brian de Palma movie everyone loves so much.
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