In some ways this feels phoned in, but it also jibed so impeccably with my mood when I heard it (and probably pretty well with my sensibilities overall) that I ended up really fucking liking it. I was recording with Big Daddy Russ yesterday and we were talking about DJ Quik. I was saying that he didn't impress me too much lyrically on the last album I heard from him and BDR was tryna convince me that it's all in his flow. I listened to a couple tracks from Quik Is the Name and didn't really hear it, but he's just perfect in this. Kurupt definitely has some kosher lines but it's really all Quik's show, mostly because he actually seems to actually care about the project. It's kind of jarring hearing this right after his first album without any transition, but he's made the leap into the 21st century head-first production-wise. Every beat is creme de la creme, and speaking of which Cream N Ya Panties has the best sample ever on the hook. Yo-Yo kills it on Whatcha Wan Do, haven't heard her since that Ice Cube track. Quik never leaves the pocket either, without sacrificing creativity. Add in its brevity and I think I'll be getting a lot of play outta this. Also I like how this one critic characterizes West Coast backpacker rap as "what happens when guys with enormous vocabularies smoke a lot of weed."
Choice cuts: Cream N Ya Panties, Hey Playa (Morroccan Blues), Jupiter's Critic & the Mind of Mars
(I couldn't find a screenshot so here's a publicity still.) Gee if my parents knew I'd grow up to watch golden age Hollywood they wouldn't have bothered making me wait til I was 14 to watch old James Bonds in an effort to instill gender equity in me. I don't really get why the writers made such a point of establishing the protagonist's Hammeresque levels of mac daddy PI-ness only to have him act like a pussywhipped schmuck throughout the second half (the ending maybe gives it some context), but it does make for some great lines early on:
"Now Mr. Sorelson, there are just two things I'm interested in: women and money. Right now I happen to be long on women."
After awhile the preciousness gets kind of wearying though, and it ends up a decidedly mediocre entry into the noir canon (though a great title for the final track on my upcoming noir-themed album). The highlight is the relationship between the main guy and the blond dime on the left side of that poster, but unfortunately she's not the leading lady. Other neat moments: a rear-projected roller coaster ride, a dead-on transition from a photograph on a pamphlet to a moving image, and a weird visual fadeout before the audio in the scene's finished. Again I dig this IMDb reviewer's description: "This little programmer is one of the many forgotten little baubles that used to dot TV land back in the days before all those rotten Infomercials took over late night viewing."
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