YoYoYoYoYo
Big Dada, 2006
rating: 4/5
reviewer: filmore mescalito holmes

"Your sound is dead" (IMC)

Big Dada has really got something here. Baltimore emcee Naeem Juwan (preferably referred to as Spank Rock) and producer XXXchange have enough respect for classic rap and what hip-hop means culturally to appease the old school crowd, enough fresh-faced innovation and open-mindedness to satisfy the intelligent hip-hop heads, and enough panty-stripping rhymes and pseudo-dancehall rhymes to satiate those misled Black Eyed Peas followers. It should please just about everyone. Politics aside, YoYoYoYoYo is a party record, more so than a Dr. Dre record, with dated beats targeted to popular, white, high school kids too dead inside to dance faster, could ever pretend to be. Juwan's pretentiousness slides closer to honest, sexual cockiness, as opposed to the 50 Cent ilk's money-driven, debasingly sexually aggressive, proud-to-be-ignorant vanity that's currently poisoning the mainstream market. So even with all the "p-p-put that pussy on me" posturing, Spank Rock is a much more positive, believable, and creative act than all the Dr. Fiddys could ever have their label PR reps allow them to be. Yo is just plain fun without having to sacrifice ethics and pander the lowest hip-hop clichés (e.g. all women are bitches, the hypocrisy of wearing silver crucifixes encrusted in African blood diamonds, etc). Creatively, the sounds that make up "Far Left" speak to a level far beyond the comprehension of those who think sampling two notes from a steel drum is all it takes to be fresh, while "Bump" rides a Nintendo peak more often referenced by indie rock than hip-hop, one I've only seen done as well by Xiu Xiu's cover of Joy Division's "Ceremony." If this world is at all just, Spank Rock will become as successful as M.I.A. has, if not more, and without the help of Gwen Stefani.

1. Backyard Betty
2. What It Look Like
3. IMC
4. Rick Rubin
5. Touch Me
6. Bump
7. Sweet Talk
8. Chilly Will
9. Far Left
10. Coke n Wet
11. Competition
12. Screwville, USA