"In New York... vital new rap voices aren't exactly thick on the ground these days," wrote Tom Breihan in his review of Vado's first release in the Slime Flu trilogy, from 2010. He was right, but in the two years and change since then, no city besides maybe Chicago has been able to keep up with the Big Apple's steady outpouring of buzzing MCs. Vado's native Harlem alone has given us both A$AP Rocky, whose LongLiveA$AP moved 139,000 units in its first week, and Azealia Banks, whose upcoming debut, Broke With Expensive Taste, could do just as many. In other boroughs, everything from Action Bronson's free-associative id to the mid-90s East Coast revivalism of Joey Bada$$ to Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire's kinetic Def Jux pastiche has made its way above ground. Not all of these guys are stars, exactly, but the "New New York" tag they've collectively attracted makes some sense.
Vado's not really part of all that. Instead, he's been salvaging whatever life Dipset has left in it while Max B is locked up, Cam'ron hasn't released a solo album since 2009, and Juelz Santana, though he's finally released his long-anticipated God Will'n, has been mostly invisible. But while the 27-year old is still synonymous with Cam-- together they released the five-installment Boss of All Bosses mixtape series, 2011's Gunz n' Butta LP, and last year's mostly fruitless Blu Tops EP-- he's slowly been distancing himself from his mentor, to the point that the latter doesn't make a single appearance on the new Slime Flu 3. That never proves to be a big problem, though. More refined than last year's crudely mastered 2, and more varied than the 2010 original, it's Vado's most definitive showing yet, and proof that he deserves to be a fixture in the contemporary New York rap conversation.
The 17-track, 70-minute tape has everything that's served Vado's releases well in the past-- liberal use of his "Sliiiime!" adlib, lots of sports references, a couple of whopping beats from AraabMuzik. But more importantly, it takes the things we've come to expect from him and, on a few occasions, gets the utmost out of them. Araab's productions, "The Awards" and "Niggaz Sleep on Me", are total rave-ups, as strong as anything he did for Gunz n' Butta. "My Team Go", all low-end judder and air-raid sirens courtesy of the Pennsylvania-based Stoopid on da Beat, is a variation on Meek Mill's "Burn", but there's just a little more craft at work here than there is on its precedent. Vado might never give us a "Hey Ma" or a "We Fly High", but songs like these, on which he blusters through titanic beats with galvanizing taunts and general defiance, are exactly what he should be doing.
3's most impressive feat, though, might be the quality control it maintains even as it detours into sounds and styles that Vado attempts less frequently. "Bad Bitches" is the tape's one attempt at a club smash, but where a lesser MC might coast on such a track, saying something about molly and letting the beat do most of the work, Vado brings to it some of his most inspired rapping on the tape. The six-minute "When I Die", by contrast, is a glimpse of his underrated narrative abilities and wouldn't sound out of place on a latter-day Wu record, bedecked with meandering horns and barely present drum patterns. Even the two Lana Del Rey-sampling tracks (again: the two Lana Del Rey-sampling tracks) sound worlds more natural than they do gimmicky, which is further testimony to Vado's acumen and versatility.
Then again, Fred the Godson, JR Writer, and Chinx Drugz account for 60% of 3's features-- Vado doesn't appear all that concerned with what's in vogue in the first place. More fashionable decisions could yield greater returns over the short-term, but catering to trends of any kind often pigeonholes and limits the longevity of artists, especially in rap. Vado knows this, and if he continues to release projects as solid as this one, there'll always be a place for him.
