redmethodman's Full Review: Rollin' Stoned [PA] by Kottonmouth Kings
What do you do when you've been one of the top five grossing underground bands in the U.S. for coming up on a decade? When you're able to sell out the House of Blues but people still respond to your name with blank looks? When you've embraced a variety of styles and merged them together in a way few groups have dared to and still notched only one gold record?
If you're the world's one and only "psychadelic hip-hop punk rock" group, California's Kottonmouth Kings, you get back to the studio and record an alblum full of potentential radio hits, complete with jiggy beats, a healthy dose of rock, and plenty of teenage angsty lyrics. So how does the Kings latest and most radio friendly effort stack up?
Rollin' Stoned
1)Magic Bus (N/A)
2)Sleepers (***)
3)Full Throttle (*****)
4)4-2-0 (****)
5)Big Bank (N/A)
6)Enjoy (***)
7)Positive Vibes (****)
8)Zero Tolerance (***)
9)Float Away (***)
10)Pot Head (N/A)
11)Pushin' Limits (**)
12)Pull, Pull (N/A)
13)Rest Of My Life (**)
14)Living In Fear (**)-Featuring The Judge
15)Sub-Noize Rats (*)
16)Strange Daze (***)
17)Tangerine Sky (*****)
18)Built To Last (****)
19)Waking Dream (****)
20)Soul Surfing (****)
21)Endless Highway (**)
22)Light It Up (*)
After a useless intro with a little girl reciting the ABC's against a backdrop of samples, the pulsing first cut Sleepers begins. This is the saddest type of song; the kind that has the potential to be block-rockingly awesome but peters out. After a cool intro with creepy, distorted voices in the background, a banging Asian-styled back beat kicks in and the song coasts along on it's sonic power until the chorus where band vocalist Johnny Richter does a fairly good job of crooning a hook where he laments the plight of his band, saying "We're the ones the whole world slept on". Unfortunately, while the hook and beat are awesome, the verses are not. Other vocalist D-Loc gives a decent but unspectacular rap in the second verse, but Richter's opening rhymes are awful, showing he's lifted a verse from the Fred Durst book of songwriting:
"F**k you!
F**k all the people always runnin their mouth!
F**k that b**ch a*s coward who f**kin flooded my house!
F**k everybody who said this s**t here would never happen
Now who’s laughin? you said we’d never make it by rappin
But you was dead wrong! This song was made to strictly prove a point
See my d**k? well you can lick it as I fire up this joint!
Gettin me pi**ed off will definitely get you s**t on
Don’t turn your back on the Kings, our team’s too f**kin strong!"
Come on, you can do better than that.
The next couple cuts are better. The ferocious Full Throttle, in paticular, is excellent. Featuring some not too shabby brag rap verses accompanied by dark, rumbling backbeats spliced in between a raging hard-rock chorus, the track is the best rap-rock merger the group has ever done and a good example of how good they can be if they try. 4-2-0 is the first of the group's obligatory odes to weed on every disc. This one is one of the better ones, however. The stuttering, electronic beat is excellent and the dense, layered chorus with both Richter and band singer Brad "Daddy X" laying down vocals is pretty decent as well.
Enjoy is the group's first stab at trying to expand it's songwriting for the record, with Richter and Loc rapping about what they're enjoying in life and what they think is wack. It's not a bad concept, but the song's El-P like electronic rumble doesn't work, and X's singing on the chorus is just wack, wack, wack. You can be a punk vocalist or a singer, but not both, amigo.
A better effort at trying something new comes along next on Positive Vibes. With it's jam-band style guitar in the back and some good singing by Richter, the track just projects an uplifting mood, although the PG-13, Bob Marley wannabe lyrics are only adequate. And it's kind of awkward for a band who spent the majority of their career fashiniong a hip-hop assault against the system to all of a sudden shift gears and try to be postive. Not that I don't applaud the effort, but I wish they'd handled it more smoothly.
In fact, right after the track is over, the sound of gunfire is heard and the weak rap-metal song Zero Tolerance kicks in. Tackling the familiar territory of the government's war on drugs, the song does benfit from the rappers' smooth delivery and a pretty decent verse by Richter (although compared to the all around excellent Tell Me Why off their last disc, it ain't that great):
"I’m here to free all the people that are livin in fear
The modern day Paul Revere, Just lend me your ear
Cause they’re comin, in fact they’re already right here
You know how much they spent in the war on drugs just last year?
Eleven-Billion Dollars straight down the drain
The war on drugs has cost a lot, you shouldn’t worry about me, or my bag of pot
Not hurtin’ nobody, not polluting the youth
Not sellin no lies, I’m only giving out truth
Try to tell me what to do, I won’t listen to you,
I’ll smoke weed till I die, out of joints, pipes, tubes!"
It's followed up with another weak tune, the reggae tinged Float Away, featuring guest vocals by frequent KMK collaborator Dog Boy. Unfortunately, once again, the tune is the same thing they've done before, only worse. I like the track a lot better when it was called On The Run on their last disc. Pushin' Limits is even worse, another weak rap-rock song taking pot shots at the government. Rest Of My Life is maybe the worst idea the Kings have ever had for a song, with Richter trying to carry the entire song himself by singing the praises of marijuana over some incredibly wack acoustic guitar. What the hell is this s**t? No one buys a Kottonmouth Kings CD to hear singing and acoustic guitars!
Living In Fear is a straightforward hip-hop track, with the Kings again retreading familiar territory as they lash out at cops and the government in general. The beat isn't bad, but the raps by the Kings are weak, and in stark contrast to his microphone crushing performance on the Kings Killa Kali, recent Sub-Noize signee The Judge sounds almost laconic here, spitting a weak chorus and some skittery rhymes that dont fit the beat. I'm still looking forward to his alblum, but I sure hope it's better than this.
And then the disc hits it's lowest point on the unbearably wack Sub Noize Rats, where the Kings try to sound like the moronic punks they idolize with an incredibly basic, three chord guitar accompaniment and a long string of call-and-response lyrics. Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine a room full of stoned hip-hop fans really wanting to yell lyrics like "SUB! NOIZE! RATS! WE SKATE AND DESTROY!" back at the group.
But the disc is partially redeemed by it's closing tracks, a string of good songs like few the Kings have ever done. Soul Surfing is another rap-rock fusion effort, but it's one of the group's best, with lyrics that use surfing and other sports as a metphor for life during the verses before another blistering punk rock chorus. The minor electronic touches and some suprisingly strong vocals by Loc are also great. Waking Dream is another ode to marijuana, but it follows a different track than the group's others. It's lyrics are darker, for the first time adressing how life just seems to float by when you stay high all the time, and the bass heavy backbeat with it's sped up drum cadence is pretty cool as well. Built To Last is basically a preview of D-Loc's upcoming collaborative alblum with DJ Bobby B, with Loc rhyming as B lays down an electronic style track with a cool, latin flavored guitar riff running through it. Loc's lyrics are actually pretty good on this one, hitting a good note between serious and sarcastic:
"Back in the day I was a pest in the classroom
With a attitude, babblin'
On the desk I was taggin'
While the teacher was talking
Hald the time I was nappin
Sides the fact I was slacken
Didn’t care if I was passin
Relaxin and laughing
Stealing pencils and graphing
Children for magazine
Memories of causalities
People now gather me I’m the D-L-O-C
And all I do is smoke weed."
But the biggest suprise is still to come as the group unleashes what might be it's best song ever, Tangerine Sky, where the group finally figures out how to fuse it's rock, reggae, and rap joneses perfectly. The beat, with it's melodies and drums, would be a well produced hip-hop track by itself, but with the other reggae instruments running through it, it could work just as easily as dancehall or ragga. Even better, the group takes it's lyrical game up a notch on this track, managing to deliver some pretty decent reggae influenced rhymes that live up to the beat. Richter is the standout here:
"I’m gonna live my life from day to night with no hesitation
Make the best of every situation that I find myself placed in
Decidin right from wrong, choosing my final destination
Cause when it’s said and done, it’s just yourself that you are facin’"
But after that string of hits, the disc closes on two weak notes with the unmemorable touring ode Endless Highway and another unbelievably wack track, Light It Up, a six-minute (yes, you read that right) acoustic ballad sung by Richter where he adresses the importance of friendships and weed.
CONCLUSION
There are some excellent tracks on Rollin' Stoned, and longtime fans of the group will definately want to pick it up just for the highlights. But at the same time, i'm not at all sure I like the group's new direction. Hidden Stash proved the group could make totally legitimate hip-hop, so why they're now braching off into rap-rock just as the trend is dying is beyond me.
And Richter, keep the singing to an absolute minimum on the next release.
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