It's a good thing Conor Oberst's Team Love record label doesn't have any hip-hop cred because it would have undoubtedly vanished with the release of Folks Music, an amateur-at-best disc from this Omaha rapper. Of course, such a ridiculous title is akin to the funniest hick on "Blue Collar TV" or the most accomplished post-Pinkerton Weezer album-- any way you cut it, you're not saying much. Mars describes the Omaha hip-hop scene as "almost non-existent" on the Team Love website, and it's only in such a desolate music environment that his pitiful flow, painfully corny emo-rhymes, and insulting bling-boasts could exist.
But all the blame for this wearying record can not be blamed on one man-- it can primarily be blamed on two. Producer-DJ E. Babbs is like the Primo to Mars' Guru-- only without the raw talent, beat-mining prowess, and smooth delivery. Babbs scratches, cuts, dips, and fades with considerable dexterity at times, but his self-produced source material is sincerely lacking. He takes Primo's peerless boom-bap style and turns it into a murky put-put mess on tracks like the Linkin Park-tinged "In the Street" and "I Know Why" with its ticky-tack garage sale drums.
Meanwhile, Mars' long expired old school flow seems stuck in the pre-Rakim era. The rhyme patterns are painfully simple, and he is often found behind the beat and woefully out of breath. To make up for his lack of skill, Mars employs the "louder means better" strategy as he tries to put a lot of overly exuberant feeling into his words, often yelling them. On the apocalyptic "Year of the Tiger" Babbs provides an uncharacteristically solid production based on crusading horns but Mars ruins the track sounding like a madman screaming on a treadmill. Not a good look.
Lyrically, the heartland MC puts too much stock in tired axioms like keeping it real and knowing your history. "I'm givin' you my life, not a pack of lies," he says on "Crack the Whip". Turns out the life of a Nebraska rapper just isn't that exciting. Even when he goes against his mantra and spools out some obvious fibs, they come off as more pathetic than ego-boosting: "I'm the Jay-Z successor," he spits on "Fade to Black", but even his moms isn't buying that.
Perched in a misguided holier-than-thou pose, Mars speaks some bullshit about being true to the game in an interlude midway through the record. Talking about flash-in-the-pan MCs, he says, "Thing is, they've got no skill...they want somebody to respect them just because they've got a little hot single." He may be the toast of Bright Eyes' hometown but given the choice between someone like J-Kwon and Mr. Black, I'll be getting tipsy all day, every day.
