balogun's Full Review: Looks Like a Job For... by Big Daddy Kane
Maybe Kane and his love songs came a decade too early. Maybe one Ladies' Man was enough for hip-hop. Maybe Kane was too associated with his battle rapping, ill metaphors and Afrocentric social commentary. Maybe most of his love songs were really not all that good. Or maybe it is all of the above. Either way one sees it, it was obvious that the hip-hop world was not having it. Big Daddy Kane’s career consequently suffered, experiencing arguably the most distressing slide in hip-hop history due to negative feedback for his R&B-flavored beats and romance songs. And the fact that he posed for Playgirl and in Madonna’s controversial Sex book only made things worse.
So it is befitting that he tried to make a comeback with 1993’s Looks Like a Job For…, swinging his talons at his detractors like a cornered lion. It’s amazing what adversity can do – it can be the world’s greatest motivator. Kane’s furious delivery is back – with a vengeance. “Many people tried to say I fell off/He went R&B, now his rap is all soft/But if you say that on stage, I'll prove you wrong/And wax that a55 rapping off a love song!” he claims in the opening title track.
The Wrath of Kane is back.
In contrast to the relatively tame battle rapper in Prince of Darkness, Kane sounds hungrier than ever – for the respect he had lost from most of his hardcore fans. The tongue-twisting – originating in this album’s immediate predecessor - is still in place, as evidenced in songs like “Ni99az Never Learn”. He still has those hilarious one-liners, like when he says, “You fu@king new jack! You still got price tags on your rhymes!” in the Lil’ Daddy Shane-featured “Brother Man, Brother Man”; and similes and puns in songs like “How U Get a Record Deal?”: “I'm keeping girls of all shades on my trail/From a Sister Act down to a Single White Female/’Cause when I hit the skins they all say, ‘Damn, Kane/You knock out the Bush like a presidential campaign!’" He covers alliteration considerably for perhaps the first time in his career in songs like “How U Get a Record Deal?” (“I write raps, ready to rip and rock real rough rhymes/Running rugged and raw, rapidly ruining roaches!”). And Kane reminds the listener of his status as the originator of fast rap – his direct descendants being people like Busta Rhymes, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Twista – when he spits enviably in the Scoob and Scrap Lover-featured “Chocolate City” and “Here Comes Kane, Scoob and Scrap”; or the remix of “Nuff Respect”, which first appeared in the Juice soundtrack.
The absolute braggadocio highlight, though, has to be the conceptual “Rest in Peace”, which opens with a funeral service for a “slain” microphone before segueing into exposing the smooth-rapping culprit:
Rappers, I get ‘em and hit ‘em and slit ‘em and split ‘em and rid ‘em
Acquit ‘em, when I get with ‘em, you can tell that I did ‘em
I take ‘em and shake ‘em and bake ‘em and ache ‘em and break ‘em
And rake ‘em, you can't awake ‘em from the comatose way I make ‘em
‘Cause when you're messing with me, you know what?
You can swallow a live grenade and you STILL won't blow up!
That mic got messed up real bad!
But there is also an underlying two-part theme in Looks Like a Job For…. At a time when gangsta rap was the most commercially and stylistic faction in hip-hop, Kane decried the fact that people would rather have him be a gun-toting criminal than an innocuous lover. “So why you wanna be what you're not?” he yells in a song which deals with racial self-esteem and superficial friends (“Stop Shammin’”). It is “Prelude”, though, that is the centerpiece of his criticism of studio gangsters. Over the steady hand-clapping, he raps: “I mean, for goodness sake/The only beef you ever had was a sirloin steak/[…]/Why should I give up for gangster contrast/When I can rap about getting some a55?/To prove that I'm a gangster only brings me trouble.” Then he turns around and does a spoof on a gangster tale with “The Beef Is On”. He’d rather be a lover than a fighter.
And loving he does pretty well here, which is where the other part of the theme lies. “Very Special” is considerably tarnished by some really corny rhymes from Salt-n-Pepa’s DJ, Spinderella (“You're always on my mind even more than my own skull”? What the heck is that?). But it is altogether a nice remake of Debra Laws’ 1981 R&B single “Very Special” and has some really good choral singing from the ultra-emotional Laree Williams and Karen Anderson. It would also be Kane’s only pop hit, making it onto the Top 40 charts; and be redone nine years later by Jennifer Lopez and LL Cool J into an even bigger hit as “All I Have” (at #1). “Give It to Me” is a way better song, though. A direct descendant of “Smooth Operator”, it is a relaxing R&B number of cascading piano notes as Dark Gable unrelentingly hits with amusing metaphors, similes and puns to describe his sexual prowess:
Like Moses, I part them legs like the Red Sea
And then I plant something deadly
Pounding and pounding, is how I'm serving this
Making it look like your bed is going through turbulence
[…]
I shove deeper than the voice of Barry [White]
To make you hit high notes like Mariah Carey
It's like a Morris Day jerk-out
To put you in more positions than a Jane Fonda workout
From beginning to end, Kane is like the sexual equivalent of the Energizer bunny – he never stops. This is undoubtedly the most underappreciated song in his entire catalog.
As for the production, it’s still mostly a self-produced affair, with some help from producers like the TrackMasters, Easy Mo Bee, Large Professor and Hank Shocklee (of the Bomb Squad). The result is a very consistent soundbed, characterized by speedy soul- and funk-drenched tracks comprising booming bass and aggressive drums. There are some exceptions, though, like the light-hearted sparseness of “Brother Man, Brother Man”; the sweetly slow-paced horn-driven funk of “Rest in Peace” and the R&B reposefulness of “Very Special”. Overall it is a complimentary effort, fitting the lyrics nicely like a glove.
As Big Daddy Kane closes his shout-outs in the last track “Finale” with the words, “I’d rather be hated for what I am than be loved for what I’m not,” I occasionally can’t help but shake my head simply because his admirable level of sincerity, honesty and audacity was not better acknowledged by hip-hop fans in general. Sure, it is nowhere as innovative as Long Live the Kane or topically expansive as It’s a Big Daddy Thing. But Looks Like a Job For... is a very good album – possibly third-best in his career – that did not deserve the same commercial fate that befell his previous two albums. By extension – and in a fair world - Big Daddy Kane’s critical acclaim should have been commensurate with his commercial fortunes. And that makes what he says in “How U Get a Record Deal?” all the more painfully ironic: “Check…Billboard for my five-year duration, and see that I got more spots than a Dalmatian!”
TRACK LISTING:
1. Looks Like a Job For…
2. How U Get a Record Deal?
3. Chocolate City
4. Prelude
5. The Beef Is On
6. Stop Shammin’
7. Brother Man, Brother Man
8. Rest in Peace
9. Very Special
10. Here Comes Kane, Scoob and Scrap
11. Ni99az Never Learn
12. Give It to Me
13. Nuff Respect (Remix)
14. Finale
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