Mystikal Featuring Lil Wayne And Fiend, "Paper Cuts" And The Amorality Of Art
Despite the fact that he has one of the most distinctive voices hip-hop has ever known, it's hard to root for Mystikal. Recording for Master P's No Limit Records, the Operation Desert Storm veteran played a major part in putting New Orleans rap on the map in the late '90s-remember "Here I Go," or "It Ain't My Fault" or "The Man Right Chea?" Then, even as No Limit went into decline, he rose to greater stardom with a string of hits produced by Neptunes that more effectively channeled the spirit of James Brown better than any rapper ever did before or since. "Shake Ya Ass" is one of those songs that have you remembering exactly where you were the first time you heard it. (Nowhere interesting in my case, just in a car, parked in front of a friend's house in Massachusetts. But still, I remember it very well!) And "Danger," and "Bouncin' Back." He really caught something special there for a while.
I went down to New Orleans to interview him for Vibe magazine in March, 2002. He was perfectly nice, but he travelled with a large crew of bodyguards that, while also perfectly nice, to me at least, boasted of having spent time in jail and threatened people in my presence. I was sad and horrified to learn, five months later, that he had been arrested, along with two of the bodyguards, and charged with the rape and extortion of his hair stylist-apparently enacted, and videotaped, as a form of vigilante justice because they suspected she had stolen money from him. He pleaded guilty to sexual battery the next year, and in 2004 was sentenced to six years in prison and you didn't hear much more about him after that.
He got out this past January and is back to making music. And I'm surprised by how much I like this new song, "Paper Cuts." The beat is sort of industrial (I think it's supposed to sound like a money-counting machine… and it does) but an echoey underlying bass line gives it a very appealing warmth. And it features what is definitely the best verse I've heard from Lil Wayne in a good long time (I imagine it was recorded before he want to prison in March) and Mystikal's old No Limit crony, Fiend, who sounds sweaty and hungry and energized. And Mystikal himself, with that great, gritty hoarseness in his voice (he's the rap Rod Stewart, maybe?) leaping off the track like it used to, making up for lost time. "Feel like I haven't dropped an album since the Beatles!" he says, and you can feel it, too.
It's a lesson in the amorality of art, I guess. The artist does the work and the work now stands as a thing unto itself. It doesn't matter what you think of the artist as a person or any of the other things he or she has ever done. If it moves you, it moves you. So even if it's hard to root for this, I can't help but dig it.
the fact is, you'll have a pretty fucking boring music/lit/etc. collection if you boycott despicable human beings. though, that said, i haven't been able to stomach listening to john, the wolfking of l.a. (one of my all-time fave albums) since mackenzie was on oprah.
Are you fucking serious? You think there's "verse" and "music" going on here? And for christ's sake, there hasn't been a new beat in hip hop since 1993.
This shit is BORING. If you met a guy who told you his interests in life were sex and money, you'd roll your eyes and say, "Wow, really? Sex AND cash? How original." Hip hop has been that guy for twenty years.
If I met a guy who cursed at me with the third word he said, I wouldn't pay much attention to much else after that.
Thanks for writing in, though, Jacques.
ugh. you know what's boring? the played out, borderline racist, "new hip-hop sucks" claim. it's the "i like every kind of music but rap" for dudes that own a few non-threatening native tongues records.
The guy who remembers where he was the first time he heard Shake Ya Ass is offended by the f-word?
And you know your cheeky explications of troglodytic rap lyrics have a demeaning component. You're like some nineteenth-century anthropologist praising the savages for their ingenuity. Mystikal did not write a song about the amorality of art–that's your tongue-in-cheek, deliberate misinterpretaion of his work.
@iantenna i never said new hip hop sucks or any of that other stuff you invented. the hip hop dave bry writes about INVARIABLY sucks–it's usually top 40 garbage.
@jacques: "And for christ's sake, there hasn't been a new beat in hip hop since 1993" and "Hip hop has been that guy for twenty years" both imply that you only like pre-1994 or pre-1991 hip-hop, respectively. what, exactly, have i invented? those are your words, in what way did i misinterpret them?
saying rap hasn't changed much in 20 years is not the same as saying new hip hop sucks (sometimes the same old beats sound good), it's not the same as saying "i like everything but rap," or "i only own natives tongues records." OK? I was offering an aesthetic critique (which you didn't refute) and you called me a borderline racist. some people criticize hip hop because they LOVE black culture.
and, you know, it's "the Awl," not "the Pedestal" for lowbrow junk.
regardless of my take on this song, you essentially said hip-hop has not had an original thought in 20 years. which is a) bullshit and b) pretty fucking demeaning to a lot of black (and white, and otherwise) folks that have dedicated their lives to the art.
plenty of people who work in hip hop have said pretty much what i've just said: that the scene has been played out for a while, that this is the nadir of the genre, music for white suburban kids. in fact, many have been saying that for 20 years. don't you know there are talented black musicians out there who hate it when white people praise crap like Shake Ya Ass?
Solid track… thx for posting it….