updateghost's Full Review: Office Space by Original Soundtrack
Let's face it, folks: Mike Judge's 1999 film is a great, GREAT film, full of brilliant dialogue, wonderful direction, and a most awesome representation of what we all want to do to the work place. The acting isn't bad, the scenes are funny, and its a great movie to talk with your friends about.
Sadly, the soundtrack is not all the above.
When I saw and bought Office Space, I recall enjoying most of the rap music- so I have no idea what the hell happened with this soundtrack. I expected it to be one of the greatest rap collections I'd ever heard- but it definitely didn't even make a close call. There are three good songs on here, and one GREAT song- then eight bad ones. That's enough to make this a two-star album.
I guess that's all I can say for a preface- the presentation for this album is so poor, there's not much else to say about it, other than the songs. You can tell little effort was put into it- especially with the opening track, which is the closing song in the film, oddly. It's a rap song with an excerpt from the film mixed in and repeated several times, called Shove this Jay-oh-Bee, by Biz Markie and Canibus. The excerpt starts out cool, and you may laugh when you first hear it, knowing what part of the movie it is from- but then, after it is repeated OVER and OVER again, it gets old, and I was sick of this song after one hearing. I didn't mention the rap that goes along with this- it is also not very pleasant.
Next is Slum Village's Get Dis Money, which really just sucks. It starts off with three DMX rip-offs sing-rapping about how they gotta 'get dis money,' and then an Usher rip-off who I wanted to blow up comes in, with a tune that makes you want to... well, blow him up. I don't recall hearing this track in the film. Thank God.
After that is Get Off My Elevator, which is, in a way that I cannot come close to really explaining, strange. It has an odd porno bass playing in the background, with an off-beat chorus that sounds so amateurish, I really wonder what the hell they were thinking, selecting this song. Its very far from professional, and that goes for the rap too.
Big Boss Man is a song so horrible I can hardly bear to hear its name. Its an awful mix of R&B and... is it folk? I can't tell. Throughout the song, Junior Reid sings in such a petrifying voice that the hairs on your back stick up- sort of like when your second-grade teacher screeched her nails on the board.
I suppose the next track, Lisa Stone's 9-5 is supposed to be fun, cool, and stylish, but it is of course far from this. I've never been into music like this, which is a cross of gospel and the Spice Girls- one genre I don't find too bad, and another genre that scares the hell out of me (I speak of music frightening me all too much).
I like Ice Cube, but Down for Whatever just sucks- Ice (or Cube, if you prefer) just rants on about how cool life is, and all how he has all that sh*t people long for, and how he always gets drunk and laid. I'm really sick of songs like this. Do we care about Cube's sex and drug life? No. Do we care about yours? No. So please, shut the hell up. For all of us (and no, I'm not schizophrenic).
Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta is too long, too slow, and too biased. First, it tells us what you have to do to be a real gangsta-@$$-n*gga, which just doesn't float with me, so that's minus points right there, as if the artists to this song (the Geto Boys) are the only ones who know. And then, the rap to it is fairly slow, and it's not really that great since it continues in the same pattern, and just goes on FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR get the point? This song would be good if it wasn't so repetitious.
I can't really explain why this next song is bad- it just is. Home probably is a song that would work for other people. However, for me, it does not, and I was, as with most of the songs on this album, sick of it within a few seconds of listening to it.
Ah, FINALLY, the good songs. I thought I'd never get to them. SCARFACE's No Tears is the great song on the album- without a doubt, one of the best rap songs I've ever heard. Though its part of a series of songs (you can tell this if you listen to the whole track), it works very well by itself, and is beyond fun to rap to, with great lyrics which talk about the street life:
I got my pistol point cocked
Ring-a-ling shots not-stop
Until I see your monkey-@$$ drop
And let your homies know whodunit
Cuz when it comes to this gangsta sh*t
You motherf*ckers know who run it
So when you put this motherf*cker to the test
You gotta realize something, you f*ckin' wit da very best
A great, great song.
Still, which comes next, isn't necessarily great, but its very, very good. The rap is almost as good as Scarface's (but not quite), and the beat that plays in the background is very, very cool. The lyrics go so fast I can't necessarily tell all of what they're saying, but from what I can hear, its pretty good.
The album closes with two Mexican songs by some Mexican guy named Perez Perado, and they are called Mambo No.8 and Peanut Vendor. They feel out of place on the album, though you can remember them from the movie. However, they're still pretty good songs for their genre, and a smile comes across my face whenever either of them comes on.
Sadly, those first eight songs cannot measure up to these last four, and the album can't balance out to at least an average rating. This is disappointing, but hey- not all soundtracks can be great. All that matters is the movie.
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