To hear Homeboy Sandman tell it, he’s in a great place now, contented and spinning raps for the pure joy of it. The Queens-bred rapper’s ninth album, Dusty, is his first on Mello Music Group since parting with Stones Throw, and he’s said that it is his most uninhibited release, one in which he allows parts of himself he’s kept in check to “flourish and surface.” But what mostly comes through on Dusty is what he’s already communicated, over and over again—he’s a technically accomplished rapper, and...well, that’s about it. If you’re looking for someone who will cram words like “hypotenuse” into verses, this is the album for you.
It must be mentioned as a baseline: Homeboy Sandman is good at rapping. But it’s the kind of good that treats words as a means to an end; that end being proving he’s good at rapping. It’s an empty loop, exacerbated by the fact that he isn’t rapping about much of anything else in particular, save for the weaklings who aren’t measuring up the standards he’s setting. “I don’t wanna be associated with these dudes/Take a peek inside the dossier of a recluse/Who ain’t gonna pretend a serving size is a teaspoon,” he raps on “Far Out,” without going any further out. He’s far from done clearing his throat: “The difference between you and me/Could fill the sun and earth, moon and sea,” he spits on “Live and Breathe.”
His only other discernible interest is sex, and on “Pussy” he turns his pursuit of it into a Seussian rhyme: “I love it more than rapping or eating/I love it more than napping or reading.” “Wondering Why,” which is just a string of rapped hypothetical questions, was executed more effectively by Jadakiss in 2004. One question Sandman never asks himself, but should’ve: What, exactly, is the point of all this?
On any of Sandman’s songs, there are moments that can make you marvel at the wit of his wordplay or the detailed arrangement of his raps themselves, their sequence and structure. Every now and then, he’ll articulate an idea perfectly: “I deal in the absolutes/Exact as a science/One synapse at a time’s how I spend my whole life/It’s a spirit thing/It’s in here/It keeps me from hearing things” (“Always”). Or he’ll strike a nice balance between his left and right brain: “Greatest look since dinosaurs and the protozoa/Greatest hooks since southpaw Rocky Balboa,” he raps on “Yes Iyah.” Over a diverse selection of traditionalist beats by longtime collaborator Mono En Stereo (formerly El RTNC), Sandman is always engaged, but he’s rarely engaging.
Sandman clearly thinks of himself as a peerless writer and rapper. But as pure-bars showcases go, it is less personal than Young M.A’s Herstory in the Making, less colorful than super-producer team-ups from Danny Brown and Freddie Gibbs. He’s not as thoughtful as MIKE or MAVI. His more immediate peers, guys like Quelle Chris (who appears on this album) and billy woods (who he’s taking on tour), use their lyrical acumen to put finer points on big ideas, and don’t sacrifice any of their outsider cachet doing so. Rap albums don’t need overarching concepts, but they do need ideas, and it’s unclear if Sandman has any of his own worth sharing on Dusty.
