Good Enough

This is a really complex album. And not so for the usual reasons, like it deals with morality in ambiguous and dangerous situations, or that it deals with Zen-Motorcycle-Maintenance philosophy. It’s complex because the form, delivery, and intended audience are completely foreign to me.

It sounds like the magical-mystical-negro lecturing a pants-sagging gang of bangers on how to grow up and achieve with half his speech slurred and the other half in a jive-lingo so alien I need subtitles.

A few things are going on here. First, the positive message. The content of the album is invariably positive. ‘Beautiful Skin’ promotes socially conservative dress for women even if it takes sexual promiscuity for granted. ‘Inshallah’ and a series of snippets from other work on the album contrast the rigors of daily life with the evangelical ecstasy. ‘Gutta Butta’ starts off with an insert that demands people take care of their community, because he’s tired of seeing trash everywhere. So far so good.

But the verbiage is all off. The opening track, ‘The Experience’, drops the n-bomb like, one hundred and seventy four times* to make the point that the true enemy of the black community is itself. In the insert before ‘Gutta Butta’ one member rails against the trashy appearance of the community, and he specifically calls out ‘ya’ll folks comin’ up outta the store takin ya ‘lil candy out, throwin ya ‘lil paper on the ground, man, is fuckin up the hood’. I still have no idea what one track title ‘Greeny Green’ relates to, and context clues from the song don’t help. The rest of the tracks paint the nobility not necessarily of escaping the ghetto, but instead living a virtuous life within the system. As a white male, I’ve no connection to this.

Which would be excusable if it was nevertheless really fun to listen to. And it is. Parts of it, at least. Cee-Lo is an amazing performer. His choruses on ‘Inshallah’ and ‘Beautiful Skin’ are like visions of beatitude. His flows on ‘I refuse limitation’ and ‘Ghetto-Ology’ are inspired. His voice is like an old man with a wide grin and emphyszmatic throat and all the rhythm of a Birmingham protest. Unfortunately, there are three other members of Goodie Mob.

One of them, Khujo, sucks. As in, worse than the guys that are in the clan but don’t get mentioned on Wu-tang albums. It’s mostly his punctuation. He throws pauses for emphasis after inconsequential details and rush through the end of important ideas and into new ones without any momentary stop for clarity. And a bunch of his shit doesn’t rhyme, and when it does it sounds accidental. The net effect is like if you took a paragraph from a book, and then read it to a beat, but tried to make it sound gangster. Three years ago a friend of mine literally did this. It sounded better.

T-mo and Big Gipp, the two remaining members, are average. Its thug rap, but of the innocuous kind that seems to drone more than delight.

I rate this album ‘A Lesson Before Dying’. Because there ain’t but three well known rap crews to come out of Atlanta, and Goodie Mob is one of them, this CD is something any rap listener should listen to at some point. But it deals with a perspective and subject matter that’s so different from what I’ve seen and done and experienced that it feels like whoever made the album didn’t want me to listen to it. The appeal is anti-universal.

*Not really 174 times.