Scarface: The Fix : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Eleven years after the Geto Boys released We Can't Be Stopped, Scarface remains the rare rap veteran who has maintained his relevancy. On his seventh album, he is still dedicated to the elements of the gangsta ethos that transcend time and still compel the listener. Like Ice Cube's classic AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, The Fix is able to achieve a real breadth of emotion and sound within the narrow alley that is gangsta music.

With his trumpetlike voice, Face sounds like a preacher at the church of the poisoned mind, weaving textured patches of paranoia, hope, decision and rage into unhurried sermons. On his duet with Nas, "In Between Us," he speaks to betrayal and jealousy with verve and passion. "I'm-a tell you like this/You only as good as what you come up against." The soulful, bass-loaded production takes a Southern approach to pacing ("On My Block"), with now-and-again touches of East and West ("Guess Who's Back" with Jay-Z, "I Ain't the One" with W.C.). On "What Can I Do?" Face again speaks on the inevitability of death: "I sit and watch my cigarette burn down to the ash. . . . I save me a prayer/'Cause eventually I stand in the path/Of the souls and the dark roads that lead to the west." The Fix is poignant, personal work, performed with clarity and conviction and imbued with the muscular spirituality that marks all of Face's music. The result is outlaw truth well told and the best that hip-hop has offered up this year.

ROB MARRIOTT
(RS 905 - Sept. 19, 2002)