Buried Alive was recorded in a flurry of sessions during his 2001 trial. The bleakness shows. On his 2000 debut,
Shyne, he used reggae to connote exuberance. Here, the sample of Bob Marley's "No More Trouble" on "Quasi O.G." only underscores the morbid storytelling. On "Edge," Shyne groans, "Every breath is a step to an untimely death." And on
Godfather's best track, "Diamonds and Mac-10's" -- produced by Just Blaze to sound like a superhero theme song -- Shyne gets so emotional that he could star in a scared-straight video: "Can't take the pressure or this pain/Too much for these young eyes/Real G's don't die/That's a lie/'Cause I'mdying inside/Crying inside."
As a rapper, Shyne has got loads going for him -- a hypnotic, gelatinous vocal tone that sounds less like Biggie with each listen. Occasionally he's clever ("Different strokes for different folks," he raps on Godfather, "just give me different coke in different boats"), but mostly he sticks to straightforward, artfully constructed boasts. The beats -- some old, some new -- are just as down-to-business. They're competent but mostly unremarkable, except for "The Gang," which uses the same hook as Raekwon's 1995 classic "Verbal Intercourse."
But Godfather doesn't sound dated; it sounds dateless, in a bad sense -- boilerplate raps and beats that could have been recorded whenever and wherever. (The rhymes about Donald Trump are so old they've become new again.) It's the rare rap album where you know the songs are hardly at all representative of the artist's current situation. The only track that bears a time stamp is "For the Record," a bitter, calculated excoriation of 50 Cent -- "You don't wanna ride/You wanna get rich and hide/'Cause niggas would've died if they shot me nine times . . . / I'm-a reunite you with your moms/R.I.P." -- that was apparently recorded over a jailhouse pay phone. (An early leaked version of the track featured a phone message from G Unit label head Sha Money XL offering Shyne a record deal in less fraught times.)
Granted, it's hard to raise a ruckus from behind bars. Given their parallel tales of woe, 50 is an easy target for Shyne, and beef certainly sells. But ironically, were it not for 50's ascent, Shyne's s
Biggie sound-alike Shyne returns with his second solo LP, on his own Gangland Record Corp. label (through Def Jam). With a dozen songs recorded before his incarceration for his role in a 1999 N.Y. shootout, the Brooklyn crime rapper still sounds nice, especially on the Kanye West- produced lead single "More Or Less.
