I've never been much of a fan of Scarface's rap persona; it's more of the "back in my day" kind of thing, the sort of rap that asserts that today's streets are more violent and lawless than those in the 70s or 80s or whatever, and if people could only (?) everything would be better. This kind of thinking irritates me more than anything else, and it seems especially disingenuous coming from from rappers who cultivate such violent images. Note that my problem is not the violence; it's the insistence that the violence isn't a big deal. This is why I'm a much bigger fan of hip-hop outfits like the Clipse, who make no excuses for their callowness and disregard for human life. So this thing is going to stand and fall on its beats, and thankfully enough, those are pretty good. "Safe" in particular is a great track, despite the aforementioned lyrical lameness. The two Kanye West-produced tracks right afterward are nowhere near his best work, but still better than most of the other stuff on here. Frankly, I can't tell why this album is on this list. Scarface's best stuff was in the 90s; this new work is basically a reliving of past glories. Jay-Z has been around almost as long, yet he (mostly) never devolved into hypocrisy and only-God-understands-me stupidity, like this album does in its terrible final tracks. Pretty mediocre, and not an album I'll be returning to much.
MY RATING:
5.1
Scarface - "Safe"
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