mastaghostface's Full Review: The Sound of Revenge [PA] by Chamillionaire
I’m not going to lie to you: when I first heard Chamillionaire’s hit song, “Ridin’”, I really didn’t like it. I thought, “That’s just great; another rapper talking about selling drugs.”
Oh, the irony (but I’ll get back to that song in a minute).
Well, after reading a review from Big D (shout out!) of this album, I sort of woke up and decided to actually listen to the lyrics and man, I felt foolish. I decided to do some more investigation of my own and listened to some of the tracks from his mixtapes. No sign of whackness yet. Finally, I said, “well… let me hear the actual album”.
I’m officially a fan.
THE SOUND OF REVENGE BY CHAMILLIONARE POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES
Let me get the bad stuff out of the way, though.
THE NEGATIVES
I actually don’t have a lot of negative things to say. None of the songs ever reach a rating below a three from me, except for one. Most of the problem comes from when Chamillionaire tries to make purely commercial songs, like “In the Trunk” and “Turn it up”. Well, that last song suffers mainly because of Lil Flip’s appearance. I mean, the guy’s got no lyrics at all! And the clunky beat behind “In the Trunk” can be a little annoying until those few seconds were the beats chills for a second when Cham hums over a rolling snare drum. Later on, “Radio Interruption” whizzes by and it sounds like an odd mess. First, it starts okay when there’s some tapping snare, creepy synths and low-key electric guitars. But then, it feels like the music breaks when the electric guitars sounds like it’s getting out of tune, someone starts cooing “do do doooo!” sweetly in the background and Cham starts singing random, sort-of soulful notes and overlapping his own vocals. In fact, when Cham says, “this for the streets! (Naw, this for the radio!)”, I honestly think even he’s not sure what he’s doing.
And then there’s “Fly as the Sky”.
First off, the “I’m fly like…” similes are... OLD. For some reason though, these guys (Cham, Rasaq and… Lil Wayne) don’t think so, though, and decided to make a song with a chorus where the main theme is being “fly”. In the case of Lil Wayne, he seems to have a way of bringing up the rating of a song in the beginning of his verse and then bringing it all the way down by the end of it, like a like a lyrical roller coaster; except when you go over the hill and start falling, it keeps going until it reaches h#ll. In this song, he skips the “uphill” part. As well, a deeper-voiced version of Lil Wayne... I mean, Sadaq… spits the most laughable verse:
“Mayne I'm fly as a plane” … ”I'm fly as a pelican” … “If I pull down my fly, I could p!ss on the sky Cause n!gga I'm that high I pulled up in heaven up in the candy painted ride And I gave jesus five” … ”Even in they day dreams, i'ma still stay fly”
For the sake of all that’s good, SHUT UP!
But let’s get to the good stuff.
THE POSITIVES
If you can skip past a few songs, you’ll have nothing but dopeness. In fact, as soon as the album starts, you are hit with dramatic violins, soft organs, and a death toll bell that symbolizes that the time of judgement has come to all whack emcees, and when they go out, this song will be the anthemic soundtrack. And Cham knows what his job, dropping such foreboding lyrics on these weak rappers that you know from the start what we’re going to hear. Oh, and then there’s “Ridin’ Dirty”.
Ah, what can I say.
When I finally started listening to the awesomeness that is this song, I found a rap song with swift flows, semi-narritive raps, and social commentary/commercial hit material that melds with the beat like two scolding hot metals being fused in a factory. A vibrating bass line and thumping drum pattern start us off, clearing the way for the fresh synths, low bongos, a twangy guitar being plucked silently and the immediately catchy chorus. I don’t think I have to tell you about it. But let’s get to the lyrics. If you listen to the song, he starts off by just saying that he’s cruising through town, trying to find the address of the girl he’s going to get with. While cruising in the ride, pumping his music, and making sure that no one tries to ruin his mood by jacking his car, he notices that the police are watching him from afar, knowing that they assume that he must be selling drugs if he he’s black and has a car that isn’t a pinto. Meanwhile, Krayzie Bone graces the track with a coolly sung rap verse. In it, he reveals that he is the one who is driving drunk and high and while Cham is being pursued, Krayzie is indeed “riding dirty”. We then return to Cham in the third verse, who sees the po-po following him and stopping him soon afterwards. However, after stopping him and searching him for basically nothing, they have to let him go, and Cham gets back into his car, amused by the fact that they thought they could put another black man in jail, only to have their plan blow up in their face. Eventually, he gets to his short-term girlfriend’s house and well, “it’s on!” What’s better is that the lyrics flow so quickly and with so much detail that it turns into one of those songs that you can see happening, even if it is sort of fast-forwarded.
But that’s not even the best song on the album. Actually, the best two songs come back to back on the second part of the album, “Think I’m Crazy” and “Rain”. In the former, a girl named Natalie sings with a voice that evokes the emotion of a girl who’s suffering mentally, and Cham creates an intricately detailed story about a girl who comes up to him at a bar, leading one to assume the usual rap song story that that situation creates. To the contrary, the sad “wah-wah” guitars and somber piano chords tell us different, and so does Cham. He starts talking to the girl and offers her drinks, to which she obliges. Then, as the girl gets drunker, she starts spelling out her relationship with a guy that didn’t end well. As it continues, two policemen come in, sitting close to them, but she doesn’t care, revealing the darker side of the story. Then…
You know, I won’t ruin it for you. Just be sure to check it out.
Right after that is “Rain”, a song that douses you with a thumping drum track, tear-jerking piano chords, an accompanying bass line, a falling guitar line, and actual rain and thunder. Now, I’m not downing Scarface, but Cham definitely embodies the pessimistic soul, while the chorus by Billy Cook tries to keep his head up. Cham describes an unhappy life where positivity is few and far in between, but Billy Cook does his best to keeping him from wanting to “end it all” or give up, holding on to the idea that things will get better. I don’t think my description even does justice to this joint, so I suggest you check it out yourself. It may be a song you’ll play whenever you feel down, and although it sympathizes with you, it also encourages you to keep on keeping on.
At the tail end of this lyrical journey is a spoken word outro which reinforces the feeling made in the intro, except with stronger religious overtones. Ultimately, Cham encourages others to pursue their goals so that they too may enjoy the victory he tastes, which translates into 1.5 million records sold. And although his second release wouldn’t do as well (I think), his boastful claims are backed up with lyrical dexterity, a wide range of covered topics, and some awesome board work to back it up. And though at times, his dip into the typical rap topics is a little distracting, he does manage to make most of those particular songs okay, and outweighing these exploits with deeper, more interesting songs that makes me have no choice but to give it the accolades that it deserves.
1. “The Sound of Revenge” (Intro) (5 out of 5) 2. “In the Trunk” (3 out of 5) 3. “Turn it Up” (feat. Lil Flip) (3 out of 5) 4. “Ridin’” (feat. Krazie Bone) (5 out of 5) 5. “No Snitchin’” (5 out of 5) 6. “Southern Takeover” (feat. Killer Mike and Pastor Troy) (4 out of 5) 7. “Radio Interruption” (3 out of 5) 8. “Frontin’” (3 out of 5) 9. “Grown and Sexy” (5 out of 5) 10. “Think I’m Crazy” (feat. Natalie) (6 out of 5) 11. “Rain” (feat. Scarface and Billy Cook) (6 out of 5) 12. “Picture Perfect” (feat. Bun B) (5 out of 5) 13. “Fly as the Sky” (feat. Lil Wayne and Rasaq) (0 out of 5) 14. “Peepin’ Me” (3 out of 5) 15. “Void in My Life” (5 out of 5) 16. Outro (4 out of 5)
Chamillionaire has appeared on hundreds of mix tapes and was even featured on Lil Flip s platinum certified debut Sony release Underground Legend. Aft...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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.
![The Sound of Revenge [PA] by Chamillionaire](http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/2d/16/ed/2004546131-177x150-0-0.jpg)
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.