Looking at this youthfully exuberant New York emcee, you may think of him as your average street corner confidant. Your buddy "Boo-Boo" that you send to the store for blunt wraps. Your chum "Chomper" that you'd ask to hold onto your unlicensed handgun. Or, in this case, your pal, "Juelz." He's the young gun with too much headgear and not nearly enough lyrical prowess to carry his debut album From Me to U.
He has the right people around him: a protégé of the pink fuhrer of rap (Cam'ron), flanked by one of the quickest rising production teams (The Heatmakerz) and distributed through a subsidiary of Def Jam (Diplomat Records); there's no reason for him to fail in the wildly flamboyant matter that he does. If you're not familiar with Juelz Santana, you may remember him from the news for delivering the line "I worship the late prophet Mohammed Atta/ For his courage behind the wheel of the plane/ Reminds me of dealing the 'caine." People consider his style an amalgam of the unofficial collaborating team of Jay-Z, Scarface and Beanie Sigel: emotional, charismatic, streetwise, and, in the case of Sigel, constantly repeating the last word of his rhymes.
In this respect, Santana comes off like Cam'ron without the talent. His rhymes usually start off relatively strong, taking an introspective view into various tired street subjects, from the police ("Squalie") to blowjobs ("Down") to his dead homies ("This is for My Homies"). And then, his rhymes end up looking something like what I'll write for you here: "I'm not a commie, Bobby/ Mr. Miyagi, Bobby/ I'm hardly a slob-by, Bobby/ I'm fucking godly, Bobby." Basically, he falls apart halfway through each of his verses, descending into an awkward yelling spree that fails to move him past the point he started to make with the first eight lines. The best example is, surprisingly, the first single.
"Dipset (Santana's Town)" is-- and this is no exaggeration-- the worst song of the year. A stuttering abomination, the beat by Self sounds like what might happen if "Flight of the Bumblebee" got mixed with the theme from Psycho and random female utterances. The lyrics don't help, with Santana screaming, "The whole bird gang's in here/ Like Kurt Cobain was here, YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!", subsequently setting off the nonsensical rhyme of, "They the paparazzi, they the livest posse/ Kamikaze, nazi, nazi, copy, papi?" and ending it with, "I'm a baller baller/ You're not at all a baller/ That's why I squashed your daughter/ Left her home, call her, call her." The song ends and you just sit. You think. You wonder. The song has a place in your heart now. Your arteries close. Your heart explodes. The song has taken another life. Fin.
Hearing their previous work, you might expect me to say how The Heatmakerz have salvaged this record. And while they do help, I can't quite give them pure adoration. Some songs utilize their powerful accelerated soul sample style well ("Okay Okay", "Squalie", "My Love [Remix]") while others are questionable, regarding their choice of sample. They manage to sample Mary J. Blige, a group of Jodeci rip-offs (D.R.S.) and most heinously, Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On". Supported by embarrassing pieces by Self, Chad Hamilton, Jazze Pha and Charlemagne, this album falls apart where everyone thought it would succeed--and the complete absence of Just Blaze is the final blow.
Pointlessly misogynistic (blowjob skits were done as soon as Biggie did one), lyrically weak and relatively hit/miss with production, Santana's first album is a pretty difficult listen. There are maybe a million emcees out there doing the exact same thing that he is-- only they aren't functionally retarded. Unfortunately for Juelz, he's stuck continuously square-pegging in Circle Junction. Surrounded with a low budget G-Unit and stuck in a genre with deeper, more talented peers, Juelz can't offer an interesting alternative to the common land of commercial rap.
