balogun's Full Review: Prince of Darkness by Big Daddy Kane
It was bound to happen.
With each album it was becoming more and more apparent, with songs like “The Day You’re Mine” (Long Live the Kane); “Smooth Operator,” “I Get the Job Done” and “To Be Your Man” (It’s a Big Daddy Thing); and “’Cause I Can Do It Right” and the Barry White-featured “All of Me” (Taste of Chocolate). And then, it happened. When Big Daddy Kane released his fourth album in 1991 – Prince of Darkness – many fans were aghast at the sight of the front album insert. There he was, standing right in the center of the blue-hued background wearing a white suit, in front of a half-naked beautiful woman lying on the bed…waiting for him to do his thing.
Hardly anything else could have been more shocking. You see, this was in the early '90s, when rap was not exactly best buddies with R&B. For example, LL Cool J had once dismissed the R&B genre as “old news”, and Public Enemy denounced R&B singers as “spineless” who sing songs for the “mindless”. And the fact that rappers were constantly sampling R&B songs without giving monetary compensation or even asking for permission only fanned the flames. To a genre that greatly values machismo (sometimes, to its detriment), R&B signified an outdated genre limited to churning out love songs. To sing about love - or rap over softer beats - was enough to get a big label that says KICK ME – I’M A SOFTIE! pasted on your back. LL Cool J might have been the only one to have gotten away with it. After all, his name does mean “Ladies Love Cool James”. But even he did not get away unscathed. So how was Big Daddy Kane going to fare in the R&B spectrum?
Not too well, his hardcore fans decided. I mean, this was a guy who got his first taste of success mainly for his high-caliber battling skills and a rapping technique way ahead of his time. Fans were used to seeing him getting “Raw” on the mic. So how were they going to react when he began to collaborate with Barry White and…Patti LaBelle?
The thing is…the main problem with Prince of Darkness is not that he is making R&B-flavored music; it is that some of it is not done well. Songs like “Smooth Operator” and “I Get the Job Done” succeeded because of the worthwhile lyrics and music, and BDK even mixed some battle rhymes in the former. But others like “To Be Your Man” and “All of Me” failed because of their sluggish pace and overlong length. That method just hasn’t worked for rap ballads, ever.
Too bad Big Daddy Kane commits the same mistake – again. “I’m Not Ashamed” is, to put it nicely, the worst BDK song ever. Like “To Be Your Man” and “All of Me”, it is intolerably long (seven minutes) and is placed right in the middle of the disc (like “All of Me”). The drag of this undistinguished R&B music of quiet-storm strings and horns is enough to put you to sleep. Alyson Williams lends his choral vocals to this disaster. And there’s Kane again, speaking instead of rapping, pausing for a few seconds after a sentence before moving on to the next one, about something the average listener could care less about: “Now in my lifetime I've been all around the world (Round and around and around)/From city to city, from state to state, and of course, from girl to girl (Ooooooooooh-eauuuuuuu-ooooooooooooh)!” Awwgh, someone shoot me, now!
Once again, like he had done in the past two albums, Big Daddy Kane does the bulk of the production. But this time, the results are not as impressive, or even as efficient. Yeah, songs like “T.L.C.” and “Groove With It” are quite catchy since, as dance numbers, they are sonically upbeat. But they have not aged very well, sounding just like anything that was coming out of the pop and R&B landscape circa 1991. Kane might as well have been producing for Mariah Carey, and I won’t even bat an eye. And there are others that are just so unimaginative, you feel sorry that Marley Marl was no longer in his corner. For instance, “Get Down” just never seems to take off, as he utilizes samples from K.C. & the Sunshine Band and Kool & the Gang to create a monotonous beat.
But the lukewarm ballads and badly-aged production are not the only things Prince of Darkness suffers from. Kane is not the fiery battle rapper he used to be. Is it due to a decline in lyrical technique? Not necessarily. He adds tongue-twisting in his repertoire, as evidenced by the way-too-short “Ooh, Aah, Nah-Nah-Nah” where he raps at breakneck speed while never having his already razor-sharp enunciation degraded. He is simply silky-smooth in the slow R&B burn of “Get Bizzy” and “Float”; he probably has never sounded better. And with his blistering lone verse in “Death Sentence”, you may be convinced when he says, “And any M.C. that tries to test me/I'm swelling up his jaws more than Dizzy Gillespie!”
However, there is even more of emptiness in his raps than before. The moments of brilliance are even further apart than on the last time out. And the compound and internal rhyming and multi-syllables have been scaled back a bit. There are spots here and there that make you reach for the rewind button, like when he says in “Get Bizzy” that he’s “a bad mother-", right before a whistle cuts him off. But there is absolutely nothing here that matches with the brag raps of his first three albums. In fact, “Raw '91” has to be the laziest rap – as well as song – of his career, as he merely recites excerpts from “Raw” and “Set It Off” over the “Raw” instrumental, then throws in a few rolling piano notes and six new couplets to assume that the average listener is a certified idiot. “I leave ‘em Winan[s] like their name was BeBe or CeCe!” he says at the end. Yeah, whining that us as loyal fans couldn’t kick your a55 for this. Come on, Kane!
Well, half of the four romance-oriented songs here are actually pretty good (yeah, you read that right – only four out of fifteen tracks here are romance-oriented!). For once (or is it for twice? He-he), Kane gets the beats and lyrics right. “The Lover in You” is delightful '80s-styled R&B/pop bliss, with a sunny combination of funk guitars and graceful flutes as Kane theorizes that a woman can be edible: “And put your feet up here my dear/So I can lick upon your toes until your Revlon disappear!” In “Prince of Darkness” he uses the same sample that 2Pac would use two years later in his hit “Keep Ya Head Up” to create this perfect relaxing atmosphere. Kane is the Prince of Darkness – not a “blood sucker” like Dracula (or the blaxploitation vampire Blacula), but a “black lover”. Thus the self-styled black Clark Gable (“You’ll be Gone With the Wind for messing with ‘Dark Gable’!”) spits his trademark witticisms for the ladies:
Then don't miss a breath of my kiss of death
An A-plus in lust while your boyfriend is an F
I come telling you Tales from the Darkside
And separate the men from their women like apartheid
[…]
So mysterious and serious, the women are curious
So when I walk inside of a place, it's like "Ooh, there he is!"
But slow down - there's enough of me to go around
Huh, I'm giving girls more Temptations than Motown!
Guys, grab your girlfriends.
And other songs show that merely hitting skins (I know, that is so early '90s!) is not the only thing on Big Daddy Kane’s mind. The vigorous funk of “Troubled Man” has Big Daddy Kane pondering upon the burdens of his fame, including the rumor spread about him having AIDS. Not to leave him completely alone, his family and friends show up. He and his younger brother Lil’ Daddy Shane use their sibling relationship as an analogy for a conflict-free world in “Brother, Brother”, the beat using a smooth jazz sample of Barry White’s "Playing Your Game Baby” that would be used by Black Moon two years later for “I Got ‘Cha Opin (Remix).” Busta Rhymes foreshadows once again (he had already made a guest appearance in A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario” a few months ago) the wild and colorful solo artist he would become as he outshines both Kane and Q-Tip with his rambunctious flow in the trumpet-driven “Come on Down”. And the album closer, “DJs Get No Credit”, finds DJ Mister Cee deciding, for once, to disobey Kane’s order to work the turntables, as he humorously and microcosmically expresses the spotlight growth of one element of hip-hop culture (emceeing) at the expense of another (DJing): “I'm always in the background/Supplying the sound, but my props is yet to be found!” he complains. I’m still laughing at the fact that he calls Kane a “black raisin.”
So is Prince of Darkness as bad as many rap fans claim? Sorry to disappoint some of you guys, but…nope. Yes, it is true that BDK has done better, much better. It is a record that severely belies his talent and legend, and its consequent commercial failure can be partly blamed on that. However, it is a lack of public foresightedness that gets the other part of the blame. As the result of his R&B leanings and romance songs, Big Daddy Kane’s career – at least from a commerical standpoint – will never be the same again. And that made him a sacrificial lamb for hip-hop. Look around you today. There is probably not one rapper that has not done a love song or two in his career, or does not think he’s a pimp, or at least never revealed a “sensitive” side, or has never made a guest appearance in a song done by an R&B singer. Today, the lines are so blurred between the two genres, a hardened thug rapper like Ja Rule could get away with singing in his most popular records for a number of years. Or an R&B singer is considered “old-fashioned” if he/she does not have a rapper or a hip-hop producer in his/her latest album. Hell, acts like TLC and Beyonce are sometimes labelled “hip-hop”! Yep, rap and R&B are in love with each other these days. And it’s all due to a guy without the government name of James Todd Smith.
And regarding Kane being criticized for rocking a purple outfit in Heavy D. & the Boyz’ “Don’t Curse” video…well…now I can see how we have even tolerated Cam’ron’s love affair with all things pink.
So stop hating, or at least too much. It would be best for Kane newbies to pass on this one for now and get BDK’s first two albums instead. However, for those who absolutely need to complete their collection…yeah, go ahead, give Prince of Darkness a try – the Nigerian Warlord gives you permission. But tread carefully. After all, people don’t call it Big Daddy Kane’s worst album for nothing!
TRACK LISTING:
1. Prince of Darkness
2. The Lover in You
3. Git Bizzy
4. Ooh, Aah, Nah-Nah-Nah
5. Brother, Brother
6. Groove With It
7. I’m Not Ashamed
8. Troubled Man
9. T.L.C.
10. Float
11. Come On Down
12. Death Sentence
13. Get Down
14. Raw '91
15. DJs Get No Credit
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