Redman hasn't been popping up in guest-rapper rotations nearly as often as he once did, but when he does, the effect remains the same. On tracks like Beanie Sigel's "One Shot Deal" and Ghostface's "Greedy Bitches", he blasts in like a hurricane, throwing punchlines haphazardly in all directions and cutting through all the hard exteriors around him with his id-driven insanity. It's the role he's played for more than 15 years, ever since he first came to prominence as a member of EPMD's Hit Squad. During New York hip-hop's late-90s jiggy era, he could deflate the self-seriousness of the rappers around him with a single uproarious non sequitur; I'll always fondly remember the episode of "MTV Cribs" where he showed off his bombed-out crash-pad in all its disgusting glory.
Red's released six solo albums since 1992. Every one of them is inconsistent and overlong, but all of them boast more than enough moments of delirious anarchy to redeem any excesses. Even Malpractice, his justly maligned 2001 album, had the sublimely dumb "Smash Sumthin'" working for it. Red Gone Wild, his first new album since Malpractice, is only now seeing the light of day after years of delays. So it's hard not to greet it with a mixture of relief and dread. As great as it is to see Red releasing new material, the album feels like it's been sitting in a vault somewhere since 1998, and there's something profoundly depressing about that.
On one hand, Red's consistency is admirable. He's still working with the same gang of knuckleheads, even if the commercial rap world has long passed them by. Longtime producer Rockwilder turns in a few tracks, as does mentor Erick Sermon. "Walk in Gutta" reunites Red with his Def Squad crew, even making sure to include part-time member Biz Markie, and Method Man shows up on "Blow Treez". Characters from past albums' skits return. Also still evident: Red's endless, cartoonish appetite for weed, nasty sex, and borderline-nonsensical jokes: "For that paper, I'm offending neighbors/ Running my label out of old Winnebago."
But honestly, Red Gone Wild wouldn't have worked even in 1998. The album doesn't have any of the euphorically propulsive standout tracks that held Redman's older albums together. The first single, the propulsive Timbaland-produced club-track "Put It Down", comes closest, but none of Red's lines quite find their mark. Throughout the record, Red continues to manically spill nutty, energetic nonsense over clunky, dated keyboard-driven tracks, and it almost feels as though Red's afraid to push himself outside his comfort zone and try anything else. Even his pop-culture references are dated: Joe Piscopo, Teena Marie, Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School, "getting head on my couch from a chick that resemble Rosie Perez in the mouth." It's as if weed has kept him from remembering anything he's seen on TV since 1989.
Redman also wastes prodigious album-time on his thoroughly undistinguished Gilla House crew, all of whom either unsuccessfully ape Red's blown-out comedy or offer up the sort of oppressively boring straight-faced thug boilerplate that Red always avoided himself. Even without those Gilla House appearances, though, Red Gone Wild only comes alive in quick, tantalizing bursts, never cohering into a whole or even convincingly evoking past glories. And that's a shame; Redman is way too lively a rapper to put his name on a product as anemic as this. If there's any justice in the world, Def Jam won't force him to wait six years before he gets another shot.
