#39: Showbiz & A.G. — Runaway Slave (1992)
New York, NY — Payday Records
As we reach the midway point of our journey through the year of our lord of nineteen-ninety-two, we stumble upon the familiar faces of Showbiz and A.G., short for Andre the Giant, a long-running duo from The Bronx, NY. I say “familiar” because we’ve crossed paths with them before, on Lord Finesse and DJ Mike Smooth’s Funky Technician, which we have reviewed a couple of months ago. On it we found the fairly impressive Back To Back Rhyming, where A.G. makes his first ever recorded appearance, as well as a number of beats produced by Showbiz, which, if memory serves me right, were pretty great. I can’t say I’ve ever really purposefully jammed something by these guys, but, as members of the famous Digging In The Crates posse, there is more than enough reason for me to believe that this is some quality hip-hop we’re dealing with here, so it was with an open mind and positive heart that I went into this joint.
Now, before going into specifics, I want to talk about how diverse this album is in terms of themes and moods. There really is something for everybody, from banging party anthems such as Party Groove, to silly flexy tracks such as Represent, to grim narrative songs such as More Than One Way Out Of The Ghetto, to just a majority of joints about a funnily wide array of little themes and anecdotes, such as Hold Ya Head and He Say, She Say. The guest features also do a lot to increase this joint’s SCD score, with known faces such as Lord Finesse and Diamond D showing up, as well as our old friend Dres from Black Sheep (whose one verse on this is frankly better than pretty much everything on A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing), and, much like Nasty Nas on Main Source’s Breaking Atoms, a young Big L on his first ever recorded appearance, as well as a certain D’Shawn, whose entirely rap career consists of the one verse he has on this album. As such, this is an album that never really gets samey and plain, an effect which is only amplified by the somewhat basic yet mostly effective and pleasant production.
The beats, which are mostly produced by Showbiz as far as I can tell, are notoriously jazzy, as in the deadass jazz rap sort of “jazzy”, much like those on Mecca And The Soul Brother, Step In The Arena and many others we’ve seen so far, but with an amount of dirty, low-fidelity textures that’s maybe only comparable to The Low End Theory in terms of sheer grit and sounds positively lo-fi at times — most of all in the last three songs, which had already been released in the supporting Soul Clap EP, and that makes me suspecious that they were actually demos of sorts. The sample usage is intriguing: it’s not exceedingly complex and choppy like some stuff we’ve seen before, but they are often combined in a somewhat off-kilter, uncanny even, way, providing some songs with an extra helping of alluring spice. Much like in Mecca, the beats here often feature those little intro/outro segments that consist of little breaks or loops or whatever with some spoken word or even bona fide rapping thrown on top; not a terribly elaborate trick, but one that definitely works.
The rapping, then, stands up to the producing through and through. Much like the aforementioned thematic variety, there is something for everybody in here: from the humble, tried-and-true, slightly braggy song about nothing in particular where the goal is to just, you know, shoot the shit, to the impressive storytelly epic with strong political undertones, or the marvelous, gratuitous oeuvres of lyrical architecture we all love so much to gawk at, or the blunt, grizzly mafioso joints. It’s not really overtly technical and flexy for the sake of flexing alone except in some select few parts, but it is consistently light, creative, pleasant even, and well-executed, and, flow-wise, both Showbiz (who seems to be somewhat more pensive and introspective) and A.G. (who is notoriously more aggressive and blunt, as well as more technical) mostly stay in a well-chosen lane, one that works well even if it’s not as diverse as some other aspects of their rapping.
Storytelling, while present in only a couple or so tracks here, is definitely one of the highlights of this record. It’s not gratuitous nor excessively decorated, but rather synthetic, straightforward, although with still more than enough space dedicated to poetic divagations and whatnot; similarly, their bragaddocious tracks are firm and positive but not really excessive or grating. All in all, their rapping is what I’d call balanced: skillfully crafted, rarely excessive or plain, and versatile enough to be effective at every type of endeavor they deem to try their hands out.
This album is what I’d call very well-made. It’s not overly ambitious by any means, to a point where you could almost say they might have benefitted from just a little bit more of it, but everything they set themselves to perform in here is planned, executed and finished almost to perfection. That slight lack of ambition — in the grand scheme of things, that is, and definitely not within individual tracks — might be the flaw present in this record; not the only one by any means, but the only one that I’ve found to really make somewhat of a difference, and even that is fully debatable. All in all, it’s easy to see why many consider this an essential rap album, I sure am glad that I got to spend some time with it and will be jamming this again in the future for sure.
Favorite tracks:
More Than One Way Out Of The Ghetto: If the uncanny, off-the-wall, almost haunting beat wasn’t enough, the extremely dense and compelling storytelling definitely does it for this one. On a move that I don’t think we’d really seen so far, A.G. does away with the whole chorus and hook shebang and instead just hits us with one giant straight-up verse. It’s an autobiographical joint, with a long-winded story about how coming up in the urban ghettos of New York and an account of his own trajectory of dope-slanger-turned-inmate-turned-rapper. Great rhyming is par for the course. “But the rock started sellin’, the dough was comin’ in/ Dealers wanted in, girls started runnin’ in/ Some said I’m crazy how I’m livin’/ I must be, crazy cash and crazy women […] I pursued the wrong dream/ Now to make a fast buck I gotta scheme/ Find a cee-lo game, yo Bank I gotta buck/ I ace to a deuce, yeah that’s just my luck/ I gotta go right and exact/ Instead of a package, I wanted a mic and a hype track/ Instead of robbin the parties, I’m rippin’ ‘em/ MC’s were gettin’ done, every week a different one”
40 Acres & My Props: There are many little specific, punctual, synthetic songs about a singular theme here, such as Hold Ya Head and He Said, She Said, but this one might be my favorite out of all of them. Especially cynical, on this they choose to rap about the whole scummy showbusiness thing and how grating it is to be involved in it, and even the beat sounds especially snarky and acid on this one somehow. “Record companies try to juice me for my papers/ They offer me a mule and about 40 acres […] All that is cool, but the brain is the tool/ Gimme my props so we all can rule/ Don’t show all my skills, I just sprinkle em/ And now you’re sleeping on my props, wake up before you wrinkle them”.
Runaway Slave: What can I say, sometimes there is no semi-forgotten B-side deep cut and the title track really is the dopest, flyest, baddest joint in this muthafucka. Honestly I have no idea why this didn’t make the lead single: storytelling and social critique are at an all-time high here, and impeccably executed over yet another slightly weird, unsettling, but still plenty groovy beat. Rich descriptions and narration, complex rhyming, steady technique, coherent politics, catchy chorus: they’ve done it all, folks. “Livin’ in the slums with the bums, the rats and the stray cats/ Dogs with the rabies, little babies are having babies […] Yeah it’s bad but what makes it sad/ Is that I’m being harassed by a black man with a badge/ He’s sellin’ out because he’s two-faced/ But you only got one race, you only got a nigga’s face […] Too many died for us to take a pause/ So let’s all get ours, and stop tryin’ to get yours/ Walk a straight path, but it’s so easy to stumble/ So weak minds crumble in the concrete jungle/ Get your chance to sell drugs, you don’t pass up/ But a fast buck will wind up to be your last buck/ It’s a damn shame, you’re deaf, dumb and blind”.
