balogun's Full Review: Veteranz Day by Big Daddy Kane
“Now they say, is Mr. Kane coming back to dominate?/I used to listen to his music back in 1988/Damn, he still pumping? Just when you think he ain't nothing/That kid just keeps coming back! What is he, the Terminator or something?” Big Daddy Kane says in “Entaprizin’” off his seventh album, 1998’s Veteranz Day.
Oh, the tragedy.
At this point - a cool ten years since his landmark debut album Long Live the Kane - Kane’s recording career was just about over. He hadn’t had a hit in five years, and four years had gone by since his last album. His last four albums had flopped. Scoob and Scrap Lover were gone, and so was DJ Mister Cee. The era of his Juice Crew, which included his pals Marley Marl and Biz Markie, had long entered the history books. His old label, the legendary Cold Chillin’, coincidentally folded that year. And meanwhile, as he released his album under Blackground Records seemingly without a buzz, his former hypeman and protege Jay-Z had gone on to hit major paydirt with Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life en route to enjoying more commercial success than he ever did. The cover art of his album – with his melancholy face submerged in darkness – couldn’t have been more appropriate.
But pop Veteranz Day into the CD player, and you will find an ever-defiant Kane. “Point your hands up to the sky (Vinyl stops spinning) Fu@k the chorus/And let the lyrics sit up in the track like riggamortis/I spit a few to listen to when this I do it's as if as you was invisible it'll make your life miserable!” he spits in “Pure, Uncut” without even pausing for breath. Yep, the 30-year old guy’s still got it…well, sort of. Multi-syllable rhyming – a technique he helped pioneer – had become standard by 1998, particularly among East Coast hardcore rappers. Plus, it is clear that Kane’s best days are behind him. Yes, there are still some brilliant one-liners and dazzling couplets, like in “Unda Presha” (e.g. “When you digging out your girl from behind, you're gonna find /The reason that her eyes are closed - Black Caesar's on her mind!”) or “Terra N Ya Era” (e.g. “This industry is half Kurupt just like the Dogg Pound!”). But you can forget about the compactness of his earlier brag songs. Still, the veneer of his intricate rhyming is enough to keep the attention most of the time. Besides, who else from the Golden Age besides Kool G. Rap could keep up with the present generation in pure technical skill? Yep, I thought so – no one.
Of course, the album is not just restricted to bragging. He dedicates a song "2 da Good Tymz" of the '80s; has words of encouragement for the present generation of rappers in “Entaprizin’”; still projects himself as an adversary of gangsta posturing in “Do U Really Know?”; and lectures about the cold climate of the recording industry in “Shame!” There is also this hilarious one-minute song called “Last Night Episode” in which Kane plays two characters – one telling the other about his recent sexual encounter. The romance-oriented songs are not as good, though. Despite amusing and internally-rhyming lines like “While you sitting there drinking, that glass of Cris’/I’ll be sitting there thinking, what's after this,” “Change the Game Around” suffers from an unremarkably sung chorus and a bland beat. And “La-La Land” is lyrically unmemorable, with a boring drawl of horns and piano notes. Another lackluster song would be “Earth, Wind & Fire”, a three-rapper collaborative effort that reveals why the general public has not heard of Sha-Queen and A.B. Money ever since.
And really, he could have done without the skits and instrumental interludes. Yeah, the “Intro”, “Daddy’s Theme”, “Shame! (Prelude)” and the “Outro” are crispy slices that seem to promote Kane’s musicianship, but are not quite good enough to rise above the filler designation. “Fish Pandoori” features Big Daddy Kane’s encounter with an excited Indian restaurateur couple who recite his lyrics in heavy accents to impress him enough to sign them. Borderline stereotyping, yes, but pretty funny. Otherwise a skit featuring a bunch of women talking about sex with Kane (“Girl Talk”) and another featuring a bunch of guys talking about…nothing (“Ole Time Bluez”) should have been left out this project.
Veteranz Day is finely produced, though. Again – no surprise – Big Daddy Kane is the main producer here, with some help from Easy Moe Bee (two songs), L.G. (who debuted as a Kane album producer in Daddy’s Home) and DJ III (yep, Mister Cee is nowhere to be found). It is quite a uniform result, the beats straddling the lines of funk, soul and R&B and characterized by a crispy sound with intermittent jingles, mesmerizing piano notes and defined drums. There are a few beats that stand out, though, like the dance-oriented R&B of "2 da Good Tymz"; the sharp interpolation of “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” (“Hold It Down”), the deep-fried synths of “Definitely”; and the remix of “Pure, Uncut” at the end, which brilliantly uses the same ultra-funky sample (Rufus Thomas’ “The Breakdown”) that Dr. Dre has used for Eazy-E in “Eazy-Er Said Than Dunn” ten years earlier, thus surpassing the Easy Moe Bee-produced original. The production of Veteranz Day is not spectacular, but it is consistent and gets the job done efficiently.
But ultimately the rap world had long moved on. Literally, no one was listening. In fact, Veteranz Day became his least commercially successful album, becoming the only one in Kane’s catalog that did not crack the Billboard 200 album chart. So it is no surprise that Big Daddy Kane has not made another studio album since then, ostensibly preferring to tour nationally and internationally whenever he gets the chance. But I will be damned if I didn’t say he went out fighting with Veteranz Day. Besides, his legacy as one of the greatest rappers ever is already set in stone, with makes him a little too modest when he says this in “Pure, Uncut”: “If I'm not the best, then I'm a damn striking resemblance!”
TRACK LISTING:
1. Intro
2. Pure, Uncut
3. Entaprizin’
4. Girl Talk
5. Change This Game Around
6. La-La Land
7. Ole Time Bluez
8. 2 da Good Tymz
9. Fish Tandoori
10. Terra N Ya Era
11. Hold It Down
12. Daddy’s Theme
13. Earth, Wind & Fire
14. Do U Really Know?
15. Shame! (Prelude)
16. Shame!
17. Last Night Episode
18. Definitely
19. Unda Presha
20. Outro
21. Pure, Uncut (Remix)
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.