FREEWAY
???Free at Last??? (Roc-A-Fella/Island Def Jam)
In the four and a half years since he released his debut album, the Philadelphia rapper Freeway has evolved from rising star to relic. Which isn???t entirely a bad thing. Back then he was one of the leading lights of Philadelphia???s hardscrabble hip-hop scene, and a prot??g?? of Beanie Sigel (and therefore Jay-Z???s prot??g?????s prot??g??, which counted for something). His trademarks were a bushy beard and his fervent voice, somewhere between a snarl and a yelp. And while his prospects have changed ??? his label, Roc-A-Fella, has splintered; his crew, State Property, has split; his subgenre, gritty Northeastern hip-hop, has waned ??? he still sounds like his old self.
Not that he hasn???t noticed the changes around him. Just Blaze, who produced most of the first album, is noticeably absent throughout ???Free at Last.??? As Freeway explains it, ???I???m back, without a Just track/Tried to reach out and work, but he ain???t chirp back.??? Happily, the tracks are still full of soul snippets and blaring horns. And though his main vocal weapon is brute force, his rhyme schemes are often unpredictable, and he loves to bring back an end rhyme just when you think he???s finished with it. (One stanza goes like this: aabbcdcddddc.)
He???s a more convincing bully than a flirt, which explains why pop success is unlikely, and also why his lighthearted 50 Cent collaboration, ???Take It to the Top,??? sounds a bit wan. But somehow he keeps a straight face while trading lyrics with Jay-Z in ???Roc-A-Fella Billionaires.??? (In response Warren Buffett is said to be working on a song called ???Berkshire Hathaway Working Stiffs.???) And in ???I Cry??? he explains that years after his grandparents??? death his Muslim faith provided both comfort and discomfort: ???I finally realized that they died upon the wrong religion/Hope Allah forgive ???em.??? He???s a former future star, reborn as a halfway bitter cult figure he always seemed to be.
KELEFA SANNEH