Rather see the above links in your inbox or feed reader?
Subscribe to our Links for hand-picked items from around the web
"Reality Rap" and Blaxploitation: Prodigy's Return to Form · by Brandon Soderberg
The cover of Prodigy’s ‘Return of the Mac’, a sepia tone picture of Prodigy and the Alchemist in full-on Dutch Schultz and Bumpy Johnson mode, is weird because the album doesn’t sound anything like that. It is odd that so many rappers with the compulsion to tell the truth, rappers that never gloss over the most minute of details, still look toward ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Scarface’. Why is Rick Ross named after a real-life crack dealer, while Scarface took his name from an over-the-top gangster movie? Shouldn’t it be the opposite?
Prodigy follows this line of rap realists that refuse to prettify the world around them but still, when it comes time to shoot an album cover, gravitate towards ‘Reasonable Doubt’ or ‘The Blueprint’ on a KOCH budget. This is the single aspect of ‘Return of the Mac’ that feels compromised or miscalculated because the album is fourteen tracks in complete opposition to idealizing or simplifying the criminal lifestyle.
There’s no smoothed-out gangster feeling here, just concise, soul-sampling production and detail-oriented gun-talk. The sound of the album consciously invokes blaxploitation, nearly the antithesis of the idealized gangster (or “gangsta”) story, ‘The Godfather’.
According to the Wikipedia entry on ‘Return of the Mac’, the song ‘Return of the Mac (New York Shit)’ is based on a sample from the ‘Blacula’ soundtrack. The interlude that precedes ‘Rotten Apple’ is a brief clip of James Brown’s ‘Down and Out in New York City’, a song from the ‘Black Caesar’ soundtrack. On ‘Rotten Apple’, Prodigy refers to himself as “Black Caesar”, the character played by blaxploitation legend Fred Williamson. Relaxed but on-edge, excited but weary, is the sound of ‘Return of the Mac’ and this sound is developed in part, through references to blaxploitation and the music that defines those movies.
The differences between Hollywood gangster movies and blaxploitation films like ‘Black Caesar’ are minor but similar to the differences between ‘Return of the Mac’ and the recent coke-rap trend that leans more toward idealization. Gangster movie classics like ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Scarface’ accomplish their goals exceedingly well but the movies have very little to do with real-life, even if every rapper ever will tell you different on that one ‘Scarface’ DVD special feature. Many refer to ‘Scarface’ as a morality tale and in some ways this is true, but it is also a film too in-love with the lifestyle it opposes. Even as Tony Montana is gunned-down and his ‘The World Is Yours’ sculpture mocks him, it is all a little too perfect.
Blaxploitation films are also in love with their anti-heroes but there’s a raw edge and style to most of these that downplays the idealization. Hand-held cameras, natural locations, and non-professional actors all give those films a more realistic tone. There’s rarely anything grand in a blaxploitation film and this is closer to Prodigy’s blow-by-blow style of description.
Compare the end of ‘Scarface’ to the end of ‘Superfly’. In ‘Scarface’, the anti-hero dies as a result of “the life”. In ‘Superfly’, the anti-hero stands up to crooked cops and escapes “the life”. Which one feels more exhilarating? Strangely enough, it is ‘Scarface’. Being shot-up by an inordinate amount of thugs to a Giorgio Moroder score is just cooler than hitting an old white dude with a trashcan lid and calling him a “redneck faggot”. One is more grand, one is more realistic; unfortunately, most prefer the grand. That is why ‘Scarface’ is more popular than Michael Mann’s ‘Thief’, why ‘Mean Streets’ is outshined by ‘The Godfather’ and why blaxploitation films are laughed-off as amateurish and why, twelve years after ‘The Infamous’, there’s less of an interest in Prodigy’s dose of reality than say, Young Jeezy’s crack-rap heroics. So Prodigy just said “fuck it” and made something I imagine to be close to exactly what he wanted to do. It’s a good look. Many other rappers in the precarious position between popularity and irrelevance should follow P’s lead.
Comments for ""Reality Rap" and Blaxploitation: Prodigy's Return to Form"
Great post. I couldn’t agree more.
— TEK Apr 2, 07:11 PM
since when are you guys smart and stuff?
— chrisisaballer Apr 2, 10:42 PM
Good post, good album.
— Donnie D. Apr 3, 07:57 AM
^^^
Does this nonesense mean that Bol’s commenters have made their way here?
I’ve been meaning to check out the album. Nice work, Brandon.
— eauhellzgnaw Apr 4, 02:54 PM
Great post on the high brow side for a change. Almost inspires me to return to form. I bought the album and haven’t even had a chance to give it the propr run through.
— R.H.S. Apr 4, 03:02 PM
eauhellzgnaw-
nope, it means that will high still has nothing better to do with his time.
— Rafi Apr 4, 03:14 PM
Man…that oven line was harsh….SoderBERG!
— brandonsoderberg Apr 4, 03:20 PM
Nice… I want to hear this album! Who wants to bootleg it for us?
— Nikhil P. Yerawadekar Apr 4, 06:47 PM
there’s nothing cooler than hitting an old white dude with a trashcan lid and calling him a “redneck faggot”...nothing.
— dub Apr 6, 01:44 AM
There any better Blaxploitation throwback than Camp Lo’s first? I’m waiting.
— Gandalf Mantooth Apr 6, 08:22 PM
^Possibly not.
— R.H.S. Apr 6, 09:05 PM
good review!
— rjs Mar 14, 07:20 PM