Prodigy - Return Of The Mac
www.kochrecords.com - $$$
Review by - Nin
Call him what you want, but Prodigy is nothing if not canny- the vicissitudes of the rap game have often forced the diminutive don to make some difficult decisions in an effort to maintain visibility in an age characterized by tempestuous caprice. While I believe we are all unanimous in our evaluation of Mobb Deep’s latterday output and suspect career decisions, the shrewdness of these manoeuvres have allowed the group to embalm a career that seemed desiccated a few years ago. True, the dramatic detour from the original Mobb Deep template has been much for devotees to endure, but one can’t help but feel that the consequences of such choices loom larger on Hav and P- they have effectively sundered the group from a halcyon, irretrievable past and a dubious future. Mobb Deep are adrift in the merciless present, desperately groping for some means to preserve legitimacy in an avaricious, indifferent industry.
This anguish and exasperation is writ large across this succinct statement of intent, another convincing exemplar of P’s trademark po-faced fatalism. Bitterness and uncompromising despondency crystallize into keen shards of frigid rhetoric, delivered with the graven solemnity that Prodigy has made his hallmark. Atop organic, swaggering, streetwise Alchemist production, Prodigy paints (with broad swathes of nickel black and plasma, crimson red) impressionistic images of New York as Capharnaum, a shell-riddled dystopia that smothers (with ill-will and fusillades of bullets) bourgeois notions of idealism and humanism. New York is a vicious rite of passage that concludes only in death, and P’s solution to this existential barrenness with vigour worthy of Albert Camus- revelling in the Bacchanalian pleasures afforded by wilful brutality, emotional detachment and unfettered capitalism. Acutely sensitive to the absurdity of it all, P’s meditations on impending death are bedecked with visions of material opulence, juxtaposed with a grim acceptance of his own demise. This is hell on earth, and P’s unflinching reluctance to offer any glimpses of redemption has made him one of the most bleakly austere lyricists of our generation.
It helps that Alchemist’s production is up to task- “7th Heaven” evokes vivid recollections of Scarface, all resonant digital snares and looped, consciously kitschy synth loops, while “Down & Out In New York City” is morose and ominous, a pastiche of strings and hi-hats as spare as P’s lean narrative. One would have thought that Alchemist’s imagination would have been exhausted by now, but it is laudable that the man has managed to wring a formidable career out of a somewhat limited template. Vitality and imagination bleed from every sonic pore here, and while Alchemist beats are always a somewhat predictable proposition, he has managed to infuse aesthetically similar beats with enough variety to warrant parallels to the like-minded Premo.
A worthwhile purchase then, if only to arouse some optimism for the upcoming HNIC 2 LP. This time around, P’s distinctively laconic, lackadaisical flow is untainted with the lyrical lassitude that has typified much of his recent material, and I, for one, am thankful for it. Recommended.
