The image and presence of the American prison holds an unmatchable presence in hip-hop culture. As a significant piece of middle and upper class America's fascination with the black urban male, the prison serves as the proper denouement for the gangsta ethos-- the state-designated rejoinder to a life of crime and chaos. In hip-hop, prison time equals instant credibility. The quiet mass of incarceration outweighs even the deftest emcee's verbal posturing and childish braggadocio. Moreover, pop culture has tagged prison with a sacred monasticism; inmates enter as thugs and leave as poets. (Pac's opus All Eyez on Me, for instance, came off the heels of his incarceration.) Of course, the surge in street cred and gift of perspective come at a price-- namely, that you were once in prison.
For a public starved for something more from commercial hip-hop than jewels, ass and titties, Jamal "Shyne" Barrow's sophomore release is welcome throwback, drawing listeners into harsh pulp fiction that invokes the criminal spirit of Chester Himes. Shyne the rapper and the person exist simultaneously as he backs his narratives with a 10-year sentence at Clinton Correctional and the public's usual anticipation for this album's release. Few could have foreseen that success and security of his eponymous debut would have vanished like Diddy and J. Lo's getaway car. Unfortunately, anyone hoping for "Letter from a Birmingham Jail 2004" will be kept waiting.
Godfather Buried Alive exemplifies the limitations of the gangsta genre. Unlike magicians like Ice Cube or Biggie who repeatedly refitted their chronicles of violence and spawned a generational backlash, Shyne falls into a Mad Libs style of fill-in-the-felony lyricism. Over the haunting banshee vocals on the Kanye-produced "More or Less", Shyne drops wanting lines like, "I'm living to die," and, "Fuckin' big stars and big cars/ I can say I've seen it all and done it all." When Shyne opens his material to a subject broader than dumping snitches in the river, he only manages tautological nonsense like, "Hip-hop ain't responsible for violence in America/ America is responsible for violence in America." "Behind the Walls" delivers more of Shyne's bumper-sticker gangsterisms: "It's not where you from, it's where your gat at."
Even the slick synth strings and Ashanti's surprisingly in-key vocals on "Jimmy Choo" come off mismatched. Shyne's battle-hardened cries for a chick who can cook his drugs hardly match Ashanti's chirps of, "Can't nobody touch me like you do." The duo make a hard case for hip-hop's oddest couple, competing only with the Nappy Roots and Marcos from P.O.D.'s "Aww Naww" rock remix fiasco.
Shyne's misgivings, of course, are not without contrast: His response to 50 Cent's Hot 97 diss is brilliant handbook for D.I.Y. beef. He dogs 50 over the telephone from prison. One more time: on the telephone... from prison. Scrap the presidential debates. Bush and Kerry should take their ish out over IM from Rikers. Moreover, Godfather's final cut, "Diamonds and Mack 10s", bleeds wrenching pathos and offers a profound, chilly cross-section of a Crown Heights black male. Shyne momentarily lifts the thug's facade to recount the characteristic nihilism of the gangster credo: "I'm suicidal, can't take this pressure or this pain/ Too much for these young eyes/ Real g's don't die, that's a lie / 'Cause I'm dyin' inside, cryin' inside." Shyne's ghostly stanzas ebb with intensity until his unnerving conclusion: "I see demons."
While Godfather is not Shyne's strongest release, his return to the gangster narrative may well spark a new generation of truth-baring rappers to bring C. Dolores Tucker back from obscurity. While the J-Kwons and Juveniles enjoy the fruits of paradise and their Lexus helicopters, Shyne reminds us of the ones who didn't make it: the legions of his fellow Clinton inmates fighting to keep afloat under prison's psychic burden.
