Phone callers' issue threats: "I'm gonna kill you," "We comin' for you." On the closing "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)," Smalls' world-weary delivery indicates that he considers the song title to be a perverted joke. He acknowledges a vulnerability that verges on paranoia in "My Downfall," swathed in mournful strings and neo-operatic female voices: "Before I go to sleep, I check the bed and the closet." Kelly, in preborn-again mode on You Tonight."īut near the end of the disc, Smalls is no longer the playful rogue, the marauding hustler prowling his ghetto kingdom. 1 on the Billboard pop charts on the strength of a mesmerizing party single, "Hypnotize." There's more raw fun in the "Hypnotize" vein with cameos by Too Short, Lil' Kim, Puff Daddy, Angela Winbush and R. Instead, Smalls and Combs have made a disc packed with hook-filled arrangements that straddle the worlds of hard-core hip-hop and mainstream rhythm and blues - even before Smalls' death, the disc almost certainly would have made its debut at No. But Smalls also avoids petty tit-for-tat posturing there are no putdowns of his late verbal sparring partner Shakur, no words to fuel the purported rivalry between East and West Coast. Too many tracks settle into pimp-gangbanger cliches with numbingly explicit language, casual misogyny and, in two instances, homophobic references.
"Life After Death" has its share of filler.
0 kommentar(er)
