Mike Jones is not the best Houston rapper, but he has a terrific marketing plan: brand himself. By stamping the inescapable catchphrase "Who Is Mike Jones?" and his phone number all over his albums and chopped-up mixtapes, he built a cottage industry out of his own accessibility. By the time Kelefa Sanneh printed Jones' phone number (281-330-8004) in The New York Times, the emcee's grassroots promo plan had already sold loads of records. (It also helped that Texas is the size of a small, self-sustainable country; every major player in the Houston scene was checking cheddar like a food inspector before the major labels started calling from the coasts.) And because Jones released his major-label debut before any of his cohorts (Slim Thug, Chamillionaire, Paul Wall), he gets to be starting line-up for the Houston takeover. Mike Jones has, to borrow my high school boyfriend's senior quote, made his name everyone's world.
Jones advertises his phone number on roughly every single track of WIMJ?, often rhyming the last digit, "fo'," with "Hit Mike Jones up on the low/ 'Cause Mike Jones about to blow." After the fifth or so time you start wondering if he has anything else to talk about; nevertheless, it's charming when he shouts at us all big and charismatic like a 10-gallon car salesman-- Houston is the capital of Texas car sales and the lynchpin of America's cutthroat oil industry, after all-- and when Jones isn't bragging on his majorness or woman-hating on "Scandalous Hoes", his raps are about driving as pimp factor: cars flossing wood-grain dashboards, fresh coats of candy paint, and hot rims. He shouts his milk-throated Houston drawl mostly slow: because if you drive fast you might bump the underside of your 'Lac on the blacktop. I mean, have you ever driven in Houston? The highways are plugged up with leviathan wide-body pick-up trucks that could bulldoze an SUV like a cucaracha. (I'm sorry to inform Mike Jones that trucks accounted for 57% of all new vehicle sales in Houston in 2004.) There's something inherently rebellious about going 15 mph down a Houston street, all low to the ground like you're about to pounce-- a kind of "eff-you" to the Ford F250 gas-guzzler George W. Bush helms.
Or maybe that "eff-you" should be "finger-flippin' and syrup-sippin'," as Jones raps in "Still Tippin'", the quietly blazin', violin-samplin' hit featuring Slim Thug and Paul Wall. Jones' verse on "Still Tippin'" is emblematic of Houston with its DJ Screw legacy and take-no-prisoners corporate creed, and the video is the best art film I've seen all year-- the sky is all purple, there are people rollin' everywhere!-- but the track sticks most to Slim Thugga's syrupy man-drawl, which sounds chopped and screwed without the assistance of a DJ. Jones doesn't mesmerize like S. Thugga, though his stumbled braying sounds oddly terrific over the oom-pah rhythms and screwed chorus on "Know What I'm Sayin'"; the "Nutcracker Suite"-alluding "Got it Sewed Up" (Rapid Ric's Fistful of Dollars mixtape has the actual "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy" sample); and the dubby yodelayheehoodling on "Cuttin'".
On "Cuttin'", incidentally, Jones is less interested in talking about nasty humping (aka cuttin') than serving his standard supper: drank, skunk, driving and, of course, blowing up. So when his ice grill softens a little on "5 Years from Now" and "Grandma", a sweet devotional to the lady who coined his catchphrase atop a beautiful guitar melody-- in an ironic twist, its sample is sped-up-- it's a nice break from Jones' relentless self-promo. Who Is Mike Jones? is an ample showcase for Swishahouse producers Michael K. Watts and Silah Williams, but it'd be a better record if Jones diversified. However, if anyone was going to prep America for the slew of forthcoming H-Town major-label releases, it's Mike Jones-- Who? Mike Jones. CALL NOW: Operators are standing by.
