Slaughterhouse are adorable. Clearly, this was not their intent. If you've spent any time in the last two years braving the sort of internet scuttlebutt that makes it feel like talking about rap is a full-time job, you know Slaughterhouse is what the game's been missing in 2009, a hyper-masculine corrective to a hip-hop scene that had grown disgustingly soft. But really, there's something nerdy and cute about the treehouse conspiratorial vibe of four rappers (Crooked I, Joell Ortiz, Royce Da 5'9", and Joe Budden), united by little more than a history of label politricks and a love of bareknuckle rhyming, joining forces to commit the sort of industry shakedown none could achieve on their own. You gotta wonder if Freddie Foxxx is more pissed than he usually is for not getting a call.
But the excitement is understandable-- in case you haven't noticed, everyone's hopping on the idea that there's a 90s revival underway, and in theory, Slaughterhouse provides a missing link to the awe-inspiring posse tracks of the mid-Clinton years-- songs like "Banned From TV", "Verbal Intercourse", "John Blaze"-- except that the whole album would be like that! But as anyone who's cheered for a squad GM'd by Isiah Thomas, listened to a Dylan/Dead record, or paid $12 to see He's Just Not That Into You knows damn well, the fantasy approach to franchise-building has a staggering failure rate. The best rap groups are borne of collaboration and chemistry from complementary parts, but Slaughterhouse is less duel of the iron mic and more Pro Bowl talented performers caught up in a listless walk-through with no real competitive incentive and no indication that they spent any time beforehand in the same room planning things out.
Granted, each of these guys can bring the pain on whatever track they're on, but that's pretty much the entire problem here-- all four essentially serve the same purpose, blunting each other's effectiveness and magnifying the sort of problems that always arise when a rapper can put together a hot verse but not a decent album. For all of its Jack White "realness" shtick, Slaughterhouse still has commercial aspirations but absolutely nothing resembling pop instincts.
The only way you could put together a supergroup in 2009 with a worse ear for beats would involve getting Jadakiss, Nas, Foxy Brown, and Marlee Matlin in the booth. Befitting a bunch of guys who've orbited Shady/Aftermath in various degrees, Slaughterhouse's beats are towering, but in a way that's monolithic, charmless, and corporate, like a gleaming office building. Take "Bad Boy 4 Life"-on-a-budget faux-banger "The One", inexplicably the first single. DJ Khalil's geetar-stuffed beat is so intrusive and annoying, you have to wonder why he doesn't change his named to "Khaled," and even if it had a remote shot getting anywhere near a club's playlist, a tone deaf hook from the New Royales throws it out on its ass. "Not Tonight" provides the walking music for a whole museum of Hov MC'ers, but only ends up reminding you of mid-decade Roc-A-Fella songs that you'd rather be listening to instead ("Roc Boys", "Roc the Mic", "Encore", Freeway's "Still Got Love"). "Cuckoo" takes a stab at pill-poppin', limb-choppin' horrorcore and suggests that they got greedy while ghostwriting for Detox and tried to get a drop on Relapse. There's a song with Fatman Scoop. Seriously.
To their credit, "Sound Off" and "Salute" are the sort of no-frills beatdown rap that would score a 3 ½ mic rating in The Source circa 1998 and if grokking syllables serves as your sole criteria of an MC's worth, Slaughterhouse is at least impressive on a surface level-- Crooked I puts in the best performance relative to his public stature and if you sprinkle Royce Da 5'9"s verses over a year's worth of feature spots, you might be as excited about Slaughterhouse as you were in 2008. Hell, even Joe Budden acquits himself nicely enough that you almost feel bad that there are versions of this that exist on the web where he's completely eliminated.
But Slaughterhouse's biggest weakness is what brought us here in the first place-- for a record that's supposed to be so lyrically godbody that aspiring rapsters will retreat to a lifetime of Auto-Tune in fear, the lyrics display no real wit or inspirational spark. Punchlines fail and fail often, whether it's cumbersome comestible raps that recall a very lazy DOOM ("so it bleeds to death like the middle of an unfinished burger," "I want me a sloppy ho whose pussy smells like tilapia"-- thanks for sharing, Joell), delightful homophobia ("like your boyfriend's sodomy hole, full of shit"), or broke man's Wale NBA namedrops that make you wonder how the Knicks could fuck up so bad on and off the court and yet still have Anthony Mason be the last guy who got a dope rhyme in his name ("like Nate Robinson, I back up the point").
If it seems like a show of restraint that they wait three minutes to make their first crack about skinny jeans, I don't know what to say about leaving "Cut You Loose" until the 13th track. It's your basic "you can't fire me 'cause I quit" missive to a mainstream acceptance they clearly strive for, and the saddest part is when Crooked I goes at Rick Ross and Jim Jones for taking shots at Eminem in 2009-- it takes me back to reading Guitar World in the mid-90s and suffering through technically proficient assholes like Steve Lukather and Billy Setzer putting Billy Corgan on blast for not staying true to rock'n'roll's roots. It's easy enough to dismiss Slaughterhouse as preaching to the choir (albeit one known to be stingy around the collection plate), or just point out that even the most intense internet test-tubing can't save a wack album (see also: Asher Roth), but it's that impotent defensiveness that ultimately makes you think Dr. Dre might've been right about these guys.
