Hip-hop has growing pains at the top these days, just as modern rock did after grunge conquered the world. Underground crews like Rawkus and Quannum overplay the integrity card, while the hardcore crowd keeps flogging the street shtick. (Those who can, pimp; those who can't, rap; those who can't rap -- well, thanks for the memories, Mase.) As stars like Puffy and Busta deal with their own offstage meshugas, things aren't any sturdier on hip-hop's pop front. Last year's jigmaster, Will Smith, sounds like Wee Willie in his new Wild Wild West theme, recycling Stevie Wonder gutlessly enough to bring back memories of Michael J. Fox covering "Johnny B. Goode" in Back to the Future. It's hip-hop as the blandly reverent background music that rappers once rebelled against -- the land that rhyme forgot.

Jay-Z is the great Brooklyn hope of this moment, a master of street bluff and pop bounce, and no wonder he can terrify the heads just by kicking around retirement talk. He sounds like he's wearing a WHAT WOULD BIGGIE DO? T-shirt, but Jigga lives up to the B.I.G. legacy; his place in hip-hop's Cooperstown is already secure. So all eyes are on his homeys Memphis Bleek and Ja Rule -- you might think of their records as In Jay-Z's Lifetime: The Next Jiggaration. Bleek, unfortunately, has nothing to say and isn't even clever about it. When an album begins with a GoodFellas monologue, you know it's time to adjust the cliche filters on your speakers, but Bleek's playa boasts are beyond silly ("My steak got A-1," he notes proudly in "Why U Wanna Hate"), and his producers know better than to waste quality beats here. Coming of Age illustrates the pitfalls for today's hardcore rappers, as Bleek keeps tumbling into them. "I laugh at y'all/Flash cash at y'all" -- oh, Bleek, I bet you say that to all the bitches!

Ja Rule, on the other hand, gets some flesh and blood onto Venni Vetti Vecci. You know his voice from his cameo on Jay-Z's "Can I Get a . . .," a dash of pepper to flavor the track's cold electronica gazpacho. Ja gets maximum flossage out of his down-and-dirty Queens rasp; he makes DMX sound like El DeBarge, choking on the fumes from a blunt rolled in sandpaper. He's got a way with a one-liner, boasting "a flow like sodomy" -- you have to admit you haven't heard that one before. He's also an apparently devout Christian, and his religious conflicts make Venni intense, even when the tracks get generic. After all, nothing heats up a crime story like a passionate sense of sin; it's the difference between Scorsese and a Chuck Norris movie.

Ja begins with a field-holler spiritual, begging the Lord for relief, and then rolls into hustling fantasies he hates himself for having. He gets Ronald Isley to sing on "Daddy's Little Baby," a touching lullaby for his daughter and maybe an answer to Foxy Brown's "My Life." But the most amazing track is "Only Begotten Son," in which Ja casts himself as Jesus to damn his own drug-addicted dad and to give a holla-holla to all the fatherless children of the streets. "I got a new father whose name is New York," he snarls, and while you've heard this product-of-the-environment sob story before, you haven't heard it done like this. Ja makes you feel sorry for not only him but his father, and for New York, too. He may not be versatile enough to carry a whole album -- there's loads of filler here. But unlike Bleek, Ja Rule never comes off as a phony, and at this crossroads moment for hip-hop, it's a pleasure to hear a rapper who just wants to make you feel something. (RS 819)

ROB SHEFFIELD

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(Posted: Aug 19, 1999)