Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 3

Without further ado, I present the end of my countdown of the top 10 albums.  The best rap album of 2008:

young jeezy | the recession

def jam

If I had to sum up last year in one word, there’s a pretty good chance it would be “Recession.”  From rising unemployment to rising gas prices, America took one hell of a psychological beating.  People lost houses, fortunes, and in many cases, a healthy store of pride they had built up over the last decade.  Fortunately, we don’t appear to be headed for complete depression (economic or clinical), but one only had to check his/her diminished holiday party calendar or think wistfully back to last year’s Christmas bonus to see that, in the words of one Christopher Wallace, shit done changed.

Enter: the self-declared motivational speaker of Atlanta’s burgeoning musical scene of the 2000′s.  As of 2006, Jeezy appeared to have nailed down a formula that would allow him to string together a series of hit albums for as long as he wanted to: An extremely well-chosen selection of beats, effective, if elementary, rhymes that could make even the laziest couch potato want to get his grind on, and signature ad-libs as notable as any of his raps.  This pushed his major label debut, Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101 to platinum status, and its follow up, The Inspiration, to number one on the billboard album charts.  The obvious path for his third Def Jam record would be to stick to the script, and joyfully trap his way to victory once again.  Joyful isn’t the way to describe the prevailing mood these days, and Jeezy clearly has a little more weighing on his mind this time around.

From the beginning of the intro, he lays down his mission statement: to give everybody hope.  Granted, his definition of “hope” is a little different from that of some people, and his drug trafficking imagery is not exactly the politically correct type of hope that presidential candidates tried to latch onto this year.  It is clear, though, that for once, he acknowledges that there are problems that are too big for one person to squash on their own, no matter how hard they try.  “Trap got a nigga drunk/Still tryin’ to Sober up/Wish I had me some money, I’d buy me some better luck/Might by me some more time/Ain’t nobody got it, need to find me a new gri-grind,” Jeezy bellows.  If this sounds a little different from the self-empowerment script on his first two albums, it is.

A welcome change on this album is an improvement in Young Jeezy’s overall lyricism.  Big Pun, he’s not, and never will be.  He will never blow anyone away with overstuffed bars and complex rhyme schemes full of thought-provoking metaphors.  His flow is very straight ahead, and relies on repitition, or near repetition of syllables to rhyme.  The simplicity is deceptive though, in that lines that often sound repetitive have subtly different meanings, and require careful listening to actually follow his train of thought.  He has also stepped up his one-liner game a bit, and his lines are a little snappier than last time around: “I took a Gatorade break to get everything straight/Now I’m sittin’ here like ‘How much Gatorade make?’” He’s still clearly in grind mode for a lot of the album, but he’s got a little more range in his reflections on the hustle than he ever has.  There are only three guest rappers on the album (if you count Kanye’s autotune croon as rapping), but Jeezy has more than enough to say to hold it down largely solo.  In fact, his two verses on the album closer My President are both better than the Nas 16 at the end of it (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write).  Rapping aside, no Young Jeezy album is complete without some dramatic production, though, and this one doesn’t disappoint in that regard either.

Continuing his streak of having a golden ear for beats, Jeezy has put out the best-produced album of both his career, and this year in rap.  With an ensemble cast of names like DJ Toomp, Don Cannon, and Drumma Boy, this album bangs start to finish.  Not only is there not one poor beat on the album, there’s not even an average one.  Jeezy doesn’t do low octane, and the album is one dark, dramatic orchestration after another.  Putting together a suite of beats like that, but keeping the album from turning into one big indistinct mass of 808′s and strings is an accomplishement.  Each beat is unique, though, and keeps the energy level peaking from start to finish.  Don Cannon’s re-working of Let the Dollars Circulate by Billy Paul on Circulate is probably the greatest single moment on the album.  Midnight puts up a pair of synthesizer masterpieces on Crazy World and What They Want as well.  The production matches the overall mood of the album as Jeezy tries to negotiate the line between his dope man boasts and his moments of uncertainty.  That dilemma is what defines this album, and life in the late 2000′s as well.

For the first time in his career, Jeezy admits that he doesn’t have all the answers; it’s not as simple as building a better future, one cocaine brick at a time.  Still, he is not content to sit back and let the economic downturn wash him away.  He will still show you how to make a mil right now and knows that the dollars won’t stop circulating just because he isn’t in the mix.  Jeezy’s raps aren’t exactly great life advice if taken literally, but the spirit in which he delivers them is emblematic of the times: confusion and concern, but still looking defiantly ahead to brighter days.  For capturing so perfectly and this moment in time, Young Jeezy has the best album of 2008.

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Yo peep these:

1. Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 1
2. Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 2