#16: Kool G Rap & DJ Polo — Road to Riches (1989)
New York, NY — Cold Chillin’
1989 brings us Road to Riches, an album which I also have not jammed before, even though I have listened to some of Kool G Rap’s later stuff at some point. Both members of famous Juice Crew, this is their first full-length after a run of singles started in 1986, and marked the beginning of their illustrious three-album run that ended in 1992, when they stopped working as a duo. We are now steadily moving into the proper early 90s way of doing rap, with lush, more laid-back beats and slick, multifaceted rapping. Produced entirely by our old friend, the legendary Marley Marl, who immediately signed them to Juice Crew after hearing It’s a Demo, a song from 86 that does feature here, this record once again counts with a wider and denser variety of sounds in the beats, which is something I will almost always welcome.
Now, what stands out the most about Kool’s rapping is just how technically skilled he is. All sorts of deliciously elegant multisyllabics are abound within his bars, with such subtleness that they almost never seem forced — a cool little example is in track three, Men at Work: “With satisfaction, bad assassin, fatal attraction/ Chop you to an improper fraction”. See, he’s working imperfect internal rhymes — imperfect means that they don’t have the exact same sound (assassin with attraction, for instance), which in theory is not the ideal but actually ends up giving it a little extra bounce in my opinion, a certain swing. I’m not saying this high standard of rhyming remains the same throughout the whole record, of course, and there are some less than great moments here and there; still, I do believe his refined writing is one of this album’s greatest highlights. Another great example is in track two, the already mentioned It’s a Demo:
I’m the MC humanoid and I just get annoyed
Boy you’ll be destroyed cause you copy like a Polaroid
Coming like a meteor inside any area
Make the people merrier, vicious like a terrier
Like a terrorist, I will terrorize
Telling any territory I’m a glory enterprise
The microphone fanatic, cause I’m the Asiatic
Brotherman from the motherland, rappers automatically
Suffer as I suffocate, then I start to alienate
Make you an inmate, so you cannot retaliate
Mutilate at a rate to penetrate you
No other crew can rescue
I don’t even need to explain the level of mastery displayed here, right? He manages to tightly sew a complex weave of rhymes and sounds without having to pull a “spiritual lyrical individual” — the idea is perfectly coherent and clear, and in no moment does he drop the proverbial narrative ball. Stretches like these are present in pretty much every track here, a testament to his lyrical capabilities. That isn’t, however, the only thing they got going for themselves as far as rapping goes.
According to Wikipedia, this album was a precursor of the style known as “mafioso rap” — essentially, the east coast response to California’s gangsta rap, here seen previously in N.W.A. and, to a lesser extent, Too Short. Made illustrious by the likes of Wu-Tang Clan and Notorious B.I.G., mafioso rap, as the name implies, references the east coast’s particular brand of organized crime and racketeering, and constantly mentions mobs and famous italian-american criminals in their lyrics, while also being somewhat grittier and more gloom, even if sometimes alluding to a lavish lifestyle as well. Now, this isn’t a full-blown mafioso rap album yet, but the seeds are surely there, scattered throughout the record under the form of allusions to mafia families and depictions of urban violence, all held together by Kool’s not yet terribly impressive but reasonably solid storytelling.
All in all what spoils this album the most to me is the sheer amount of filler songs. This was before they really figured out how to make a proper rap album with proper structuring (but more on that on the next review) so it’s more like a collection of good singles with some middling songs with not a lot of character between them — which has actually been an issue in pretty much all abums we’ve covered so far, but for some reason I only felt the need to mention it now I guess. The roots of the boom-bap style are definitely present here even if in a latent state, and Kool’s excellent rhyming ability goes a long way.
Favorite tracks:
It’s a Demo — Simply outstanding rhyming, as shown in the snippet posted before. It’s where both his rhyming and flowing are at their highest, as well as the most densely packed across the entirety of the track; there seldom is a wasted bar, and he takes every opportunity to flex his skills. And it only gets more impressive when you remember it was recorded in nineteen eighty fucking six, in my opinion a decidedly not-so-good year for rap as I believe I have mentioned before.
She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not — A genuinely touching heartbreak song, neither corny nor exaggerated. You can tell it’s for real, the somewhat uncanny beat contributes a lot when it comes to setting the mood, and the general technicality of it is pretty good too: “When you lost a good friend, dreams seem to end/ Cause broken hearts and men don’t blend/ So I’m not here to stick every chick I can pick/ You move too quick, you become seasick”.
Least favorite track:
Truly Yours — The beat is remarkably chill and funky, but this song’s main gist of Kool pettily rubbing it in his ex’s face for dumping him for a crackhead for five minutes straight gets old really fast, and his somewhat sluggish flow in this particular joint does not help. Especially ridiculous is the second verse, where he momentarily stops dissing the girl to instead diss her current allegedly basehead BF for *checks notes* being a big gay homo who goes to gay clubs, winks at crossdressers, gets AIDS, eat hot chip and lie. Looks like ol’ K isn’t the best at dealing with breakups, eh?
