There’s a story Questlove has told about J Dilla over the years that helps reveal the depths of the beatnik producer’s genius. As the legend goes, the pair were killing hours one night back in 1999 when Dilla started playing around with Roy Ayers’ righteous jazz number “Ain’t Got Time.” With no obvious point of the song to snatch, he instead took fragments of audio—a second here, a half-second there—and glued together a cohesive eight-bar loop. From that, Jay forged the beat that would later become Black Star’s classic joint “Little Brother.”
That’s the kind of intuition all the great crate-digging beatmakers have: a superhuman ear for harnessing a sample. Statik Selektah is from the DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Madlib, Kanye West, J Dilla lineage—a chop-up-the-soul virtuoso of dusty samples, snappy drums, and quick-hand record scratches. When everything comes together, Statik is capable of slicing off cool cuts of vintage golden age East Coast-style hip-hop. But sometimes he lacks that crucial Dilla-esque clairvoyance for spotting a great sample, and it hurts his batting average. Over 18 tracks, new album 8—because it’s his eighth LP, you see—encapsulates the Massachusetts native at his very best and worst.
One thing you can never argue about is the talent in Statik’s contacts list. Rolling back on previous assertions that 2015’s Lucky 7 would be his last album, 8 resurrects the format all his solo full-lengths have taken: a huge assemblage of rap stars are gathered—from frequent NYC collaborators like Action Bronson and Joey Bada$$, to veterans like Raekwon, Juelz Santana, and the Lox—who are seemingly shuffled up and dealt out over Statik’s beats in a manner that sometimes feels random and ramshackle. There’s also a couple posthumous verses from Sean Price and Prodigy, and no album with assists from those two will ever be totally without worth.
8 does have some sizzling highlights. The rumbling bassline and rat-tat-tat drums of “Watching Myself” is a complex soundscape, but Bronson, as loose and funky as ever, successfully rides the beat with swagger. Featuring Prodigy and co-produced by the Alchemist, “Disrespekt” is street rap in-line with the rugged, brass-knuckle psychedelica of Alc and P’s excellent previous collaborations. The best song is probably “No. 8,” featuring Griselda Gang siblings Westside Gunn and Conway, as well as Massachusetts rapper Termanology.
Too many tracks, though, don’t flow with the same elegant groove. Basslines awkwardly bump into samples, the drums can be unnecessarily abrasive, and some of the cut-up loops are grating on the ear. Take “Put the Jewels on It,” a huge coup for Statik producing a song for Run the Jewels, but El-P and Killer Mike are wasted on an instrumental built around harsh, screechy orchestral notes. Similarly, B-Real and Everlast are overwhelmed by the shrill horn stabs of “Shakem Up.”
Elsewhere, the rattling percussion, uplifting piano chords, and neatly plucked bassline of the Wale-featuring “Get Down” fail to mesh together with any kind of cohesion. On “Man of the Hour,” Statik drops the kind of shimmering, indulgent beat that JAY-Z gravitated towards in the early 2000s, but 2 Chainz and Wiz Khalifa lack chemistry with the music and each other, like their verses had been lifted from different tracks entirely.
A lot of the on-mic talent are game. Ex-Clipse star No Malice sounds lively on the choir samples of “Pull the Curtain Back,” while Joyner Lucas dexterously shows his full range of flows on “Don’t Run.” But their efforts are too rarely treated with the kind of care necessary to funnel them into great tracks. Statik is not without gifts and there will hopefully be a demand for producers of his acumen as long as there’s a New York skyscraper left standing. But this choppy solo album format feels less instinctual for the producer and fails to make the best use of his talent.
