K-SCORE: 29
Rapper: Notorious B.I.G.
"It was all a dream!" That's right folks, time for a classic, Notorious B.I.G.'s Juicy. I could listen to this song at any moment, no matter what's going on in my life. I'm hoping that Kyle will find that he has similar feelings towards this track.
By the way, people have been starting rumors about a Tupac hologram tour a la Coachella. I don't know how I feel about the whole concept, but I can say that the ONLY way that I'd be okay with a hologram B.I.G. tour it would be if Junior M.A.F.I.A came back and jumped around the stage with the hologram Biggie. How great would it be to see Lil' Cease again?
Anyway, here's Kyle's review.
-Mike
Mr. B.I.G., I’m giving you a twenty-nine for “Juicy.” I can’t give you special treatment just because you got shot to death a decade ago. There are two reasons I don’t like your song.
Firstly, when you rap in “Juicy,” you sound like you’re shouting to get the attention of a friend of yours across the street. “Hey Joe! I’m over here.” That was the tone you selected for these lines, which makes them sound utterly bizarre. “50 inch screen, money green leather sofa, a limousine with a chauffeur,” - are you placing an order like one might when they want pizza?” It doesn’t help either that you keep shouting out the names of friends of yours. Does Funkmaster Flex feel left out because he’s the only guy you know whose rapper moniker doesn’t rhyme with iced-tea?
Here’s my other complaint: you completely fail to convince me I should respect your rags to riches story. Did you and Jay Z take the same rapper classes? You’re trying to do more than Roc Boys, but you accomplish exactly the same thing. Infamous L.A.R.G.E, the underdog story is only awe inspiring if the underdog actually does something worthy of praise to rise above their early hardships. And you’ve given me no evidence that you’ve done anything that I should be impressed with. Certainly not “Juicy.”
You’ve fallen victim to the Paris Hilton effect here. Just because you’re rich and famous doesn’t mean you’re worth a damn or that you have any talent. In “Juicy” you’re trying to rub it in the face of teachers that said you wouldn’t become anything (fine), and people that called the police (uh… I have less sympathy there) when you were “a common thief” and “hustlin’” (whatever that entails), but all you’ve proven is that you’re wealthy enough now to not need to have gone to school or to be a criminal. Let’s give “all the peoples in the struggle” something more to aspire to than sitting around “smoking skunk with one’s peeps all day,” and drinking “Moet” and “champagne when you’re thirsty.” And, even twenty years ago, how on earth was your phone bill two-thousand dollars? How many overseas calls do you make every hour? Forty?
You seem to think that you’re in the “limelight” because you “rhyme tight” but I’m not so sure. I’d like to hear some of those tight rhymes from you in the future because, right now, I’m not all that impressed when you rhyme ‘day’ and ‘way’, ‘pool’ and ‘school’ and the inspired ‘stuff’ and ‘stuff’. Incredible.
Overall, not great, but you get a few pity points because you’re trying to do something more in “Juicy” than just rap about all the stuff you have and how awesome your life is. I understand that this song is about the miracle of hip hop letting you rise above a life of poverty and crime to the point where now you’ve got “sold out seats to hear Biggie Smalls speak,” but “Juicy” doesn’t convince me that your talent got you there. I suppose it’s easy for me to deny your thesis looking back on your life. You never really sidestepped that crime landmine. If you had you might not have gotten into a gang dispute, been arrested for assault twice, and then murdered in a drive-by. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, Notorious, “and if you don’t know, now you know.”
Side Note Readers: Can anyone tell me what the hell Mike is talking about in the second paragraph of his intro to "Juicy." Holograms? Mafia? Someone named Lil' Cease? Sometimes I think this is an elaborate scheme designed to torment me.