Robert Christgau said it best-- Spoonie Gee's groove is so old it's new, and Spoonie Gee's groove is plenty old-- the self-appointed Godfather cut his first track in 1979, and got his big break as a result of being the godson of the founders of both Enjoy Records and Sugarhill Records. Take a listen to that first track, "Spoonin' Rap", cut back when Gabriel Jackson was all of 16. His bravado and charm instantly place him in a continuum where you can believe Spoonie was an original member of the Treacherous Three. On the other hand, Spoonie's conversational savoir faire looks forward to a time where rappers skimmed over the beat and didn't make like an end-rhyming red bouncing ball. And he was doing it for a good five or six minutes at a time, as all MCs did back in the day, when rap still dangled from disco's umbilical cord. "Love Rap" bears some of that baby fat. Spoonie himself rightfully claims this track is one of the first attemps to pitch woo yes-yes-y'all style. Unlike future luva-luvas like Cool James, Spoonie respectfully bumrushes ladies with his rapid-fire flow-- "I got a cure for all women, and hope you understand/ Why they call me Spoonie Gee, the medicine man/ Because I do it with greed and not too much speed/ So just take off your clothes, lemme give you what you need". Spoonie proves he can run at different speeds, though-- "The Big Beat" is more prescient of the cool and confident 60-minute-man approach LL and his type of guys perfected.
This retrospective veers from enjoyable in its own right to stodgy historical document with a couple of duff tracks in the middle (the smudged white lining of "Street Girl", and the stiff chirpy "Get Off My Tip"), but then rights the ship quickly. "Yum Yum" finds a swaggering Spoonie slapping "toast" in front of his "master of ceremonies" appelation, and is followed by "Take It Off" doin' da butt DC go-go style. Tracks like "The Godfather" (produced by hip-hop pioneer Marley Marl) and "Hit Man" (produced by future New Jack Swing king Teddy Riley) are decent enough tracks from an older and wiser version of Spoonie Spoon, but, as this disc presents it, Spoonie was at his best spitting non-stop rhymes over skeletal beats, filling the gaps in the tracks with his unending charisma.
The final track of this compilation, "You's an Old Fool", hearkens back to those days, looping the now-well-worn sample of the Honeydrippers' "Impeach the President" so Spoonie can hold court on the sorts of fellas that date (and get played by) the girls who still might be a twinkle in their daddies' eyes. It's a sign of those times (back in 1987) that Spoonie doesn't overwhelm the track-- here, the music is the hook, not the MC. As such, it comes off as a track featuring Spoonie Gee rather than a Spoonie Gee track. But just like a saavy athlete saving his best for crunch time, Spoonie knows when to pick his spots-- "Cause you're much too old, he's much younger/ To her you're like drizzling rain, but he's thunder." If the only thing you know about Spoonie Gee is Mike D.'s shout-out in "So Whatcha Want?", here's the perfect opportunity to get familiar.
