Pros: The most topically diverse Kane album ever; consistently entertaining
Cons: A slightly dulling battle tongue and an overlong ballad tarnish the show
The Bottom Line: Taste of Chocolate is not as acclaimed as Big Daddy Kane's first two efforts for a number of reasons, but it is still a remarkable record
balogun's Full Review: Taste of Chocolate by Big Daddy Kane
The seams were slowly beginning to give way. It was apparent with his third album - 1990’s Taste of Chocolate - that Big Daddy Kane wanted to be a combination of a strong black leader and a sexy entertainer. Wait a second…Oh, snap! He does mention that in the liner notes. A Malcolm X/Marvin Gaye hybrid, huh? Oh boy.
If only…oh, if only he had made a song as good - or better than - “The Day You’re Mine” or “Smooth Operator”! Kane recruits “The Man With the Velvet Voice” himself – soul/disco legend Barry White – for “All of Me”. The maestro coaches the young man about the art of courting amidst a fluctuation between chilled saxophones, organs and strings and choral blasts of jubilant horns and backup singers. It really…isn’t…bad. Well, not that bad. I mean, come on! You got to laugh your a55 off when Big Daddy Kane confesses to his prospective girl, “I just wanna lay on the floor and make love to your shadow. A-heh! Sounds silly, don't it?” And then Barry White responds in his trademark baritone, “Not really!” Classic.
So what’s the problem with “All of Me”? Well, it’s twofold. First off, at a slow six minutes and with the lyrics delivered in a slow spoken-word, it bogs down the album tremendously, not to mention that it is placed smack dab in the middle of the disc. And second and lastly, Kane was just too ahead of his time. In an era where rap had a contentious relationship with R&B (more on that in my Prince of Darkness review), just what the spear-chucking hell was this rapper doing over a silky beat better suited for giving Barry White to use all by himself?
Like John Brown would say, that wasn’t a good look. At least for that time. Hallelujah holla back.
His slow tilt into R&B nuances sure didn’t dull his pen of fury, at least not that much. Even as he slows his pace in the sparse combination of differing drum loops and vinyl scratching of “Put Your Weight on It”, he is still as dangerous on the microphone: “Breaking the mic in half, just like a psychopath/But still smooth and cool, just like a draft!” And Prince Paul provides a mid-tempo funk backdrop in “It’s Hard Being the Kane” for BDK to astound with a bewildering lyrical display, with lines spilling out of bars, internal rhymes and multi-syllables compactly arranged, and vicious similes:
Let me inject this, flow of electric currency
For all the party people preferring me
And spectating like a tourist, ‘cause you never
Saw this style of rap kicking like Chuck Norris
[…]
Digest, when I manifest, you adolescent
So sit back, relax, be glad you had a lesson!
But there’s something missing. The intense moments of brilliance in the raps are now further away from each other, a far cry from the condensed assault of songs like “Raw” and “Ain’t No Half Steppin’”. At least it is understandable that Kane could never be as hungry as he was in Long Live the Kane. But even when the hunger was lessened, “Warm It Up, Kane” still had that trait its predecessors had – just when you were recovering from that ferocious metaphor, here comes a compounded-rhyme couplet to hit you with another blow. You don’t quite get that same effect with the battle raps in Taste of Chocolate. In fact, it’s the self-proclaimed “Black Caesar the Girl Pleaser” fighting for space in songs like the ultra-hyped dance number “’Cause I Can Do It Right”: “So, let me lick you from head to toe/Realllllllll slowwwwwwwww!” Hey, at least that is a way better song than “All of Me”.
Seriously, people should have cut Big Daddy Kane some slack. Taste of Chocolate still remains his most topically diverse effort. Battle raps? Check. Songs for the ladies? Check. Socially conscious numbers? You better believe he has them. The dude practically starts his album with a call for racial unity, for goodness’ sake (“Taste of Chocolate [Intro]”)! He then denounces the federal government as apathetic to the proliferation of violence and drugs in poor black communities (“Dance With the Devil”); invites one of Malcolm X’s very own daughter to rap (yes, rap) with him about tackling black identity in contemporary America (“Who Am I”); more than shakes his head about a wayward “brother” and “sista” (“No Damn Good”); and gets personal for the first time in “Mr. Pitiful”, lamenting the fleeting nature of friendships with the onset of fame.
And when he’s not so engrossed in such deep issues, he’s busy having fun. Enter Kane the party M.C. “Keep ‘Em on the Floor” is an upbeat number replete with intermittent guitar licks and triumphant horns wrapped around a snappy drum. While Barbara Walters (of Atlantic Starr fame) does the singing duties in the chorus, Kane gets the crowd “stomping like an elephant” perspiring so much from the disco heat, his “silk drawers [are] sticking to [him].” And towards the end, he calls Scoob and Scrap Lover, Ant Live and his brother Lil’ Daddy Shane to join him in “Down the Line” as he raps, “Kicking a55 in every committee, city to city, until both shoes are sh!tty!” He still has his wit, I see.
The most entertaining song has to be “Big Daddy vs. Dolemite”, though. Yeah, you read that right – that foul-mouthed player from the blaxploitation movies era makes an appearance. Dolemite himself – Rudy Ray Moore – competes with Big Daddy Kane lyrically in a hilarious display of wit to see who outdoes the other over a slow mesmerizing funk background. Although Kane does admirably (“I was making money before Washington was put on a bill/And I kicked Jack's a55 and took his hoe Jill/I'm the one who broke the bull's back/And made people say, Fu@k McDonald's and call me the Big Mac!”), Dolemite demonstrates why – among others like Muhammed Ali and James Brown – he is often considered as one of the prototypes of the modern rapper:
I was walking down Broadway the other day
An old-old lady came my way
She said, "I'll be glad when you ‘come eighteen
I'm gonna give you a fu@king like you ain't never seen!"
[…]
So I pulled out my d!ck - it was so shiny, it looked like it was painted
The ho took one look and damn near fainted
I stuck it in the b!tch, and the b!tch began to shout
"Oh, Mr. Dolemite, take that motherfu@ker out!"
Oh, heaven save us all!
As Big Daddy Kane heartily gives his shout-outs in the closing “Taste of Chocolate (Exit)”, he sure did not look like he was prepared for the dark clouds that would form over his career. Yes, Taste of Chocolate finds Big Daddy Kane expanding a little more from his usual topics; and he still is content to do most of the production work and leaving the rest to Prince Paul, Cool V, Mister Cee and Andre Booth, thus continuing to assert a high level of control over his work. However, by relying on mostly funk- and soul-sampled beats, it’s not much of a progression at all from his previous album, being merely efficient instead of remarkable or spectacular. And even if it isn’t so obvious here, Kane was simply not the sharp-tongued emcee he once was. Taste of Chocolate, even as solid as it is overall, became the first in a string of Kane releases that failed to go gold. The main reason – hardcore fans complained he was going soft. With the next album, that became even more of a problem.
TRACK LISTING:
1. Taste of Chocolate (Intro)
2. ‘Cause I Can Do It Right
3. It’s Hard Being the Kane
4. Who Am I
5. Dance With the Devil
6. No Damn Good
7. All of Me
8. Keep ‘Em on the Floor
9. Mr. Pitiful
10. Put Your Weight on It
11. Big Daddy vs. Dolemite
12. Down the Line
13. Taste of Chocolate (Exit)
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.