Cam'ron's meandering 2006 Jay-Z diss "You Gotta Love It" did little to threaten hip-hop's biggest star. But it did have memorable lines about Jigga's newfound love for chancletas, and, more significantly, announced the arrival of Max B, an ex-con rapper with the gift for a gripping melody. Max went on to much under-the-radar creative success. His widely credited ghostwriting for Jim Jones produced some of the latter's biggest hits, and helped Jones' second LP land on the Billboard top 10. He was the musical mastermind behind underground Harlem super-group Byrdgang. And Max's succession of solo mixtapes, from Million Dollar Baby Radio to Coke Wave to Quarantine, established the rapper as a major talent. His style was gritty and unrefined, yet retained immediate pop instincts. Vigilante Season doesn't move too far afield from his mixtape work, despite being his first official solo LP. This is a mixed blessing. For his fanbase, it includes better sound quality, no DJ drops, and several missing pieces from a career that was cut too short. But while it has some great moments, it doesn't stand above some of his better tapes, and may be an uneven entry point for those not steeped in the Biggaveli mythos.
But flawed as Vigilante Season is, investing time in Max's world can be rewarding. Like the biggest rappers of the past few years-- think Gucci, Drake, even Soulja Boy-- Max fills a space that, a decade ago, would have been occupied by producers. He is as much songwriter as rapper, and musically, Max is an old soul. This is most evident on one of the album's best moments, the sublime "Where Do I Go (BBQ Music)", which features dual choruses, one of which interpolates Cherrelle and Alexander O'Neal's 1985 R&B classic "Saturday Love". His ear for memorable hooks, sung in a grungy slur, gives his music a hazy, intoxicated quality. Max's lyrics don't have the opulent imagery of Gucci or the poetic minimalism of a rapper like the Jacka. But like both artists, his raps sound cool, with an effortless detachment that disguises musical precision.
His lyrics provide a rough, if familiar, street-rap character sketch, with all the rags-to-riches tales and illegal business that image implies. One of Max's particular innovations was to give late-00s New York a more universal appeal, taking an every-thug street-prophet template and coloring it with the melodicism of classic West Coast or Midwest (think Bone Thugs-N-Harmony) gangster rap. Some of this material would be tedious in most rappers' hands. It is pro-forma street music, and brutality and misogyny are a part of its fabric. His work is engaging not in spite of this-- your mileage may vary for obvious reasons-- but because he manages to suffuse this ugliness with an undercurrent of nuanced emotion. There is no redemption in his words themselves, and little sense of the pain underlying it all. Instead, the record's druggy, mournful tone and melancholy songcraft provide a contrasting canvas for Max's cool remove. In this contradiction, his detachment provides balance, raising the emotional stakes. Max is an actor in a drama larger than himself, an unreliable narrator in a chaotic world. In the tension between song and rapper lies the music's power and truth.
The production throughout-- the bulk courtesy of Harlem producer Dame Grease-- sounds dirty and dilapidated, yet remains open to smooth pop songcraft. His beats are tense and compressed, but tackle a range of moods, from the ambiguous nausea of "White Lines" to the wistfulness of "You Won't Go". Compared with the freewheeling, capricious atmosphere of the now-classic Coke Wave mixtape, Max's lyrics are shot through with bitterness. His frequent target is Jim Jones, who managed to swindle Max out of his publishing in exchange for bail money. This tone, though understandable, makes Vigilante Season a limited introduction to Max's work, but it does add a further dimension to one of this era's most underrated rap artists.
