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JennYBlast From The Past Vol.4 - Part I: Ice Cube - Death Certificate Album Review
October 31st 2008 21:47
This week on Blast From The Past, we'll revisit the early 90s with Ice Cube, Foreigner and Megadeth.
Release date: October 31, 1991
Genre: Political rap, Gangsta rap, West Coast hip hop
Length: 61:08
Label: Priority
A legend in the game, a king in the West, Ice Cube is recognized everywhere he goes. Acclaimed as one of the best hip hop albums, Death Certificate was a great album for Ice Cube. Mostly produced by Boogiemen and Ice Cube, Death Certificate has only 2 or 3 guests featuring, allowing Cube to show his rapping skills on a double-disc album.
The first disc is entitled The Death Side and starts with The Funeral, an intro on which we hear a funeral along with a preacher praying and stuff.
The Funeral is followed by The Wrong N**** To F**** Wit. This song was good but it wasn't as hard as other tracks on the album, I wouldn't put it on my iPod. It sounds like there's too much stuff going on in the beat, but Cube still attacks the mic hard.
Like its title says, My Summer Vacation is the kind of song you would play in the car under the summer sun. The album is very old-school, and I just love that old-school sound. The beat is knocking, you cannot hate this song, people. At the end of the track, there's a black man getting arrested. My Summer Vacation is also on Cube's Greatest Hits album.
The police arrest at the end of My Summer Vacation serves as a transition to the next track Steady Mobbin' which starts with the arrestation. This song is just a chillin' track to bang while you're driving as Cube does it in the video. His voice goes well with the beat, but this isn't the kind of song you can keep playing all day. Still, it's a great track. It's Death Certificate's first single.
Steady Mobbin Music Video
You can call the track Robin Lench an interlude since it lasts only one minute. I think it's a radio show or something, there's just a man talking with a loud voice like a circus' ringleader.
Givin' Up the Nappy Dug Out is crazy with the tight, funny lyricism as Cube tells a father how his daughter is becoming a slut. The chorus is just nice, both sweet and funny as a choir sings:
“I got a big old ding-a-ling, and if that bitch can hang
I'm gonna do my thing, with your dauuuuuughter!”
Cube keeps it crazy on the second verse with a tight delivery. That song is just hilarious. Definitely on the iPod.
Look Who's Burnin' sounds like it was really worked on lyrically. As for the beat, it was pretty average compared to the previous songs.
A Bird In The Hand goes back to the hard Ice Cube. This is a hard song, but somehow still sounds slow and smart. The beat switches a couple of times from big to normal, I really liked this. Once again, Cube murders the beat without stopping, he just keeps killing it. There's no chorus on this song as it finishes with those words:
“Tell the politicians, the hustlers: live and let live (yeah)
Tell the politicians, the hustlers: live and let live (yeah)”
Man's Best Friend is the ninth track on the first disc. The only word I can find to describe the beat is... cool. Just a sick flow. In this song, Cube doesn't talk about humans, he says guns are Man's best friends. In a way, he disses dogs by saying they're much more dirty/nasty than guns, that's why guns are now our friends.
In my opinion, Alive On Arrival isn't close to being one of Cube's best, but somehow you can't hate it thanks to the old-school flow. Nowadays, we only hear the techno/hip hop beat, but the old-school is much much better than the new school.
The Death Side concludes with the outro, Death which is similar to The Funeral except for a little smooth beat in the background.
The Birth introduces the second disk entitled The Life Side. In this track, we are in a hospital where a woman is giving birth.
There a are a lot of racist cuts on I Wanna Kill Sam as it starts like this: “Because we do more before 7 A.M. than most niggers do in their whole lifetime.” The beat really gets you to nod your head, just chill and relax. Cube has great lyrics on it so you can either nod to the beat or listen carefully.
On Horny Lil' Devil, we mostly hear the snare on the beat which allows us to really hear Cube on the mic. It's not a bad idea, but it is much better when has a banger in the back.
Black Korea feels like a freestyle. Indeed, it's just 50 seconds long, but it is an itense 50 seconds where Cube spits very fast. His rapid delivery really comes out of nowhere on this track.
The second single, True To The Game, is simply slow and gangster. Only it's the real gangster stuff, not the 2008 big bangers type.
True To The Game
The seventeenth track, Color Blind, features Deadly Threat, J-Dee, Kam, King Tee, and WC. The beat is sick in the beginning, but the kick and snare messed it up bad. Seriously, I'm sad how much they twisted this song badly. But this is just a track to really relax to, so relaxing that you could sleep to it.
Doing Dumb Shit sounds like a salsa rhythm mixed some old-school hip hop which kinda surprised me. Anyways, on this track, Cube talks about how he was a little gangster/rebel when he was young, doing bad stuff at school, in the hood, anywhere.
Us starts with a kid talking about that gangster shit. It's another gangster banger, but not the big banger, just a head-nodding track.
No Vaseline is a full-on assault towards his old crew, N.W.A. He disses each member one by one without stopping. The beat is straight knocking. If you search for the best hip hop disses, you know you will find the words: No Vaseline.
The album concludes with How To Survive In South Central. I wonder how the producer made it because the sound is just so nice, the bass is craaaazyyyyy, with the old-school claps of course. Anyways, this song is just straight gangster again. Another banger.
So, in the end I wouldn't buy this album. Sure I'm a huge Cube fan. I think he is truly a legend in gangster rap, but still I wouldn't buy Death Certificate because it doesn't have enough good beats from Cube. I mean sure this is good, but not his best work. If you asked me to name Ice Cube's best tracks, most of them wouldn't be on this record. But this album is tight, I give it a 8/10. A 9 would be a bit too much.
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