David Banner is a complicated man, a onetime University of Maryland grad student and committed philanthropist whose two biggest hits ("Like a Pimp" and "Play") are among the most proudly ignorant rap singles this decade. He raps with equal fervor about poverty-stricken inner-city struggle and really nasty sex, and he thinks nothing about placing entreaties to God right next to stark gun-clap threats. On Mississippi: The Album, his 2003 solo debut, those contradictions worked as strengths, as evidence that this guy was more than a garden-variety facepunch ranter. But on The Greatest Story Ever Told, Banner's fourth, those same complications turn the album into a complete mess, something that veers away from listenability perilously often.
The difference: These days, Banner really wants to be a massive star. Given that his voice is a gravelly demonic rasp about as easy on the ears as a jackhammer outside your bedroom window, that's almost certainly not going to happen. But since the release of 2005's Certified, Banner's shed a gang of weight and started wearing designer t-shirts and sunglasses. He's also committed a ton of resources into making a blockbuster event out of The Greatest Story; Akon, Chris Brown, Snoop Dogg, Chamillionaire and Lil Wayne all stop by for cameos. But Banner was a more compelling pop musician when he wasn't so worried about capitulating to imagined mainstream concerns. These days, Banner's doing everything he can to capture a mainstream that basically doesn't exist anymore, and making some cringeworthy missteps along the way. When T.I. shows up on Story, it's not to kick a verse; it's to tell a long and rambling story about how real Banner is. And "Shawty Say", Banner's best shot at crossover success this time around, inexplicably samples the only part of Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" that radio can't play, the "shawty says the nigga that she with ain't shit" bit.
Behind the inept pop moves, the old devil's-bargain sellout strategy looms: If Banner makes his record company happy by spending half his album desperately attempting to concoct hit singles, he can spend the other half telling truth to power. And so on album opener "So Long", he comes off like a big-budget Immortal Technique, demanding "fifty shots for every cop who shot Sean Bell" and calling his generation cowards for not fighting cops often enough, and he advances that same militancy all over Story. But those tracks succeed just as haphazardly as the pop songs. Nobody needs to hear "Freedom", Banner's attempt at a cappella slam-poetry, and on the messily pretty "Cadillacs on 22s (Part 2)", he clumsily sings the whole title, including the "part two."
Banner's greatest assets are the hard plastic beats he produces; he is, after all, the guy who made "Rubber Band Man" for T.I. But the beats on Story never quite cohere, and tracks like "Uncle Swac Interlude", an endless phone conversation with Banner's drunk uncle, further interrupt the flow. And Banner's firebreathing wears thin, too. As a rapper, he's unfortunately short on both restraint and punchlines. He could use an editor, especially on songs like the fuck-jam "A Girl", where he digresses from his rough-sex talk to ask his ladyfriend "Could you please come and sign this waiver?/ If you pass out, girl, you can't sue." Sign a waiver? Also worth noting: The album's best line comes from one of the guests; Pimp C returns from the grave on "Suicide Doors" to inform us that his nuts got a MySpace page. Banner could use some of that batshit humor.
It's hard not to sympathize with Banner, a truly likable figure who desperately wants to be both popular and important but who can't quite seem to make either thing happen. But if he keeps putting out scattershot albums like this one, he won't get any closer anytime soon.
