#55: R.A. the Rugged Man — Legends Never Die (2013)
New York, NY — Nature Sounds
We got a fairly modern album this time around. This guy, Richard Andrew Thorburn, better known as R.A. the Rugged Man, is an artist with a rich and interesting trajectory and curriculum in hip-hop, disproportionally to his fame, which is not too big outside of the more invested circles. R.A. has reportedly been rapping since he was twelve, and first got a record deal in the early 90s; and up until the early 2000s he released a handful of singles, including one outrageous sex flex song with Notorious B.I.G. (“I was born in special ED classes/ I’m about to do an O.J. Simpson on them”), who greatly praised him more than once. He also recorded two unreleased albums and featured in more than a few compilations and such. By 2004 he had already gone independent and in that year he released his debut album, Die, Rugged Man, Die; his second full-length record, Legends Never Die, came out nearly a decade later, something that I think illustrates R’s work philosophy: he places his artistic integrity first and foremost and wants to do his thing in his own pace, something that no doubt influenced his decision to go independent in the early 2000s even if he did have the chance to go mainstream with Capitol Records.
Now, if I remember correctly, I first crossed paths with Thorburn sometime in 2017 or so, via the late Gift of Gab’s song Freedom Form Flowing (which I like quite a lot), also featuring A-F-R-O. I eventually caught up to some of his other stuff, and for a while I was somewhat interested his music, which tracks with that period in time being the height of my lyrical virtuosism obssession. My memory of Legends consists mostly of a fast, machinegun-like barrage of technically impressive rhymes delivered over a myriad of different types of beats, with the central thing tying it all together being R.A.’s signature tone, flow and technicality. I was never incredibly bowled over by this if I remember correctly, but I thought it was plenty impressive. Does it still hold up, then?
This is the part where I usually say something like “let’s take it one step at a time” and then go into the beats and whatnot, maybe with a little joke as well, to only round up my final thoughts and verdict in the last paragraphs. But this time around I’m just gonna get it out of my system right away: no, this album sucked and I hated most if not all of it. It’s representative of one of my least liked fads in all of hip-hop history: the whole 2000s-early 2010s exaggeratedly technical, fast and verbose rapping with little substance to back it up, complete with unnecessarily edgy ideas one should definitely keep to oneself and some beats I could call badly aged, but that would be a lie, because they already sucked ass back then, all packed into a bloated, terribly-sequenced, corny, dreadful package.
Whew, OK. Alright, alright. Let’s get it on with the review now, shall we?
I want to first talk about the beats, because I feel like, even though the couldn’t really save this whole thing, they could have at least made it a little better. However, that is far from the truth: the vast majority of them pretty much blow. One of the issues with Legends Never Die is that there is a large number of different beatmakers on it — 11 producerss for 16 tracks, to be exact — which ensures that there is no sonic coherence whatsoever. Moreso, they are consistently bad, especially the ones by Mr. Green (I was really disappointed in him, given the good stuff I’ve seen him make in the past). They do way too much “funny” and gimmicky shit like sampling classical or opera or cabaret music, and when they’re not doing that they’re sampling generic “emotional” piano loops. That stuff was already passé by 2013, so you can’t even use the excuse that it’s just what was fashionable at the time. Honorable mentions go to the four tracks produced by Buckwild, Jussi Jaakola and Marc “Nigga” Niles, which are actually pretty good if not too creative boombap beats.
Moving on to the rapping: as mentioned, Thorburn is known for his highly technical rhyming and flowing first and foremost, with some world-class wits and speed. And that much is true! Honest to Dog, the man can rhyme like no one’s business, stitching together some of the most complex rhyme schemes I’ve ever seen. That is definitely R.A.’s biggest contribution to hip-hop: the complexity of his bars, to which his delivery and flow skills are very much up to the task. He never stutters, never garbles a single syllable, and, much to his credit, had already mostly let go of the whole speedflow obssession (seriously, some of his earlier stuff is kind of unlistenable given how gratuitous and unnecessary his Eminem and Tech N9ne aping is). Simply put, if we’re speaking about the technical part alone, he’s one of the best there is.
However, just building and delivering bars isn’t all there is to it. It’s often optional, of course, but there’s also the matter of the content of what’s being rapped. In my opinion it’s no biggie if you’re self-referentially rapping about nothing in particular, and R.A.’s tracks that are just bragaddocious tours de force do that just fine. He does, however, have a penchant for edgyness that really does break it for me — again, I don’t consider myself an especially squeamish rap fan, but I’m also not at all particular to gratuitous bad taste, and unfortunately this whole deal is rife with it. It’s just way too constant, and whatever humor or shock value his music might have had is spoiled by the repetitive, cheap obscene reference every two bars or so.
But, believe it or not, it gets even worse when he’s trying to be serious. Not that he talks significantly less shit than when he’s rapping about how big and nasty his metaphorical and literal phalli are, because he doesn’t, but then there’s the added stupid opinion factor. Seriously, I’m all for exposing your ideas and worldviews, but you should also be required to not have the political and historical comprehension of a homeschooled preteen, especially if your free thinker wannabe ass is pushing forty.
It seems to me like his politics are kinda like half of the way toward very generic lefty wokeness, but lose steam somewhere around that dangerously reactionary middle point: abstract anger at nothing in particular, no clear idea of how geopolitics work and a general tinfoil hat-prone sense of paranoia (“Fuck the media posing as experts/ Fuck the radio, fuck the television networks/ I’m not apologizing, I don’t care what the cost is/ Go ahead corporations, you can take back your endorsement”). Top it off with vulgar militant atheism (“School religion is a cruel depiction/ They can blind your hearing, they can mute your vision”), a severe case of Eminem syndrome (“I’m the best even if I’m pink and I’m pale and I’m lacking in melanin […] I’m just a white boy ruining what blacks invented”) and uninspired sarcastic self-deprecating humor (“I’m a piece of shit, I’m a fucking fat fuck/ Shoot me in my head, shoot me in my head”) and you’ve got an especially nasty cringeburger to enjoy at your leisure.
(I wanna be fair and make it clear that some of his later works, such as 2021’s Who Do We Trust?, with Immortal Technique, display a considerably more mature understanding of class politics, and it seems to me like he’s learned a lot in this last decade since Legends)
And then there’s the other serious tracks. Oh Dog, the ones where he opens up about his family and stuff. I actually feel kinda bad for cringing at those, especially because he did have a hard life: his dad was a homeless, traumatized Vietnam veteran, both of his siblings were born severely disabled and died due to lasting effects of agent orange, and his childhood was pretty rough. Unfortunately, if you get Mr. Green to sample a shitty busker cover of Beyoncé’s Halo for the beat of your epic song about your old man, or if you go in detail about your, and I quote, “mentally retarded” sister’s agonizing death while trying to spin it as a moralistic lesson to all of humanity… Yeah, sorry, dude. I wanna make it clear that I respect his unabashed vulnerability and openness — and there’s no denying that he makes you feel uncomfortable alright! — but execution is still important, and that much is sorely lacking.
Ultimately, Legends is a case of a nigh-unsalvageable album for me. If, for example, the beats were any good, one might have been able to ignore his shitty, edgy ideas and obnoxious, repetitive delivery, and vice versa; unfortunately, they are all like heavy anchors pulling down on each other and on the buoy that is R.A.’s undeniably amazing yet sorely insufficient lyrical technique, which bravely tries its best but is not near enough to keep this whole thing afloat. I could go on and on about the little minutiae of what makes R.A. the Rugged Man’s Legends Never Die such a bad album in my opinion. Frankly, I would enjoy it quite a lot — what can I say, hating feels damn good. But I believe my point has already been thoroughly made. Legends has taken Black Sheep’s A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’s place as my most disliked album so far by an absolute landslide, and I’m not sure it’ll ever be topped.
There are people out there whose thing in rap is formal technique and speed alone, with everything else being of little to no relevance. While I personally think that’s a superficial and puerile way to enjoy the art form, I’m also not a party pooper. So, if that’s your thing, by all means, go right ahead! This is the album for you! But it’s not for me. It is so insufferable that it warranted the return of the long-gone least favorite tracks section, and I am wholly ashamed to admit that once in the past I enjoyed this cornball’s music. It sucks, and I’m glad I’ll never in my life listen to it again. Goodbye.
Favorite tracks
Definition of a Rap Flow (prod. Marc “Nigga” Niles): this is the one lyrical flex song off of this whole joint that works the best for me. The beat is pretty great, and the fact that it was launched by R.A. as a challenge to MCs everywhere to spit their own bars on the beat is pretty neat as a community-wide thing. Some of his best bars are in here, and the speedflow thing actually works well for a change. “I’m stealing your hubcaps, ain’t nothing for discussion/ I’m crushing you’re dust and you’re done in when/ I’m busting the rough raps/ The Biz Mark, Biz Mark/ What is it? A blizzard? Is it a limit?/ Any crime you could name I committed, I admit it I did it”
Bang Boogie (prod. Jussi Jaakola): another swell, slick beat with one straightforward, directly-to-the-point verse. Nothing too special, but it’s probably my favorite out of this whole deal (lol).
Least favorite tracks
Learn Truth (prod. Mr. Green, feat. Talib Kweli): not satisfied with the incredibly corny beat, Thorburn had to invite one of the corniest rappers in the game for a feature. The result is an exhasperatingly stale, puddle-depth political song with suspicious anti-islam, pro-life undertones, over a piano loop that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Vanessa Carlton song. “Death by suicide bomb, Protestants, Bibles, a Quran, or Islam/ From Genghis Khan to Vietnam, I can smell the napalm/ Rape victims, ripped stockings, redneck Klan members doin’ church bombings/ Innocent fetuses being aborted with no options”
Underground Hitz (prod. Will Tell, feat. Hopsin): this is the one with the infamous Mozart-sampled beat that almost made me turn inside out out of sheer second-hand embarassment. Dog, there really was a time when this kind of shit was cool, wasn’t it? R.A. manages to make Hopsin look like a good rapper with good taste and common sense on this one, a feat on its own right. “Rappers is speaking with no heart, don’t start, it don’t matter/ I can slay you to Bach, Bethoven, Amadeus Mozart/ At the dinner table cursing wiping cum on your curtain/ I’m a poverty pirate, a poor penny pinching pitiful person”
Still Get Through The Day (prod. Ayatollah, feat. Eamon): this is the one with the thing about his sister, and it actually makes me feel sort of bad, so there we go. It’s kind of amazing, really, how he really thought it was a good idea to make and release this song. It’s not just a cornball anymore, it’s the whole damn cornbread factory. “My sister Dee-Dee was born mentally retarded, she was a beautiful woman/ At 26, but now she’s dearly departed […] Living ain’t a breeze, please, life’s full of tragedies/ We see our friends die, some get murdered, some die by disease/ Got your finger on the trigger, don’t do it/ Contemplating suicide, just put the gun down, we’ve all been through it”
