This album will be over before you're finished reading this review. There, it's finished. Did you miss it? It's very short. Less than 30 minutes. Ten tracks. Only two songs exceed three minutes. In almost any other case this would be an enormous advantage. For Rev Run, scourge of Old School haters, it's a non-factor. Writing about rap a lot, I tend to get stuck listening to overlong tropes. See, the streets need their money's worth-- Illmatic? No use for that kind of strategic brevity. "Fill it up with those Jazze Pha beats!" mysterious label executive says. "They'll eat up that squirting pop-up. Bring in the next kid we're going to screw over with advance money." Run, apparently, was having none of that.
Run needs no introduction-- he's got his own TV show, is Russell Simmons' brother, hosts award ceremonies and is generally considered the most vital member of the group that took hip-hop to the rockstar level. He's a shouter and a high-energy performer. Even in middle age, on his first solo album, Distortion, he does lots of shouting. We hear you. You're Run! He's also clearly still a massive rock 'n' roll fan. Traditional rock 'n' roll. None of that Coldplay shit. He samples Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll" and Kiss and Blondie. He's not kidding. Where Run got the money to clear a rather large, cloying sample of "Sweet Home Alabama" for "Home Sweet Home" is unknown. I'd guess his brother, but who's to say? What Hollis, Queens and Alabama have to do with each other also is unclear.
This album is almost a non-entity. Throw it on on the train, it's over after four stops. The big crashing snares and remarkably self-referential songs, ("I Used to Think I Was Run", "Boom Ditty") are by no means annoying. Some songs are sort of hilarious, like "High and Mighty Joe", a song impossibly written after 1988. Distortion may make you think you're Marty McFly, briefly. Then you'll feel like Christopher Lloyd. A person named Whiteboy produced the bulk of the album and he has a deft hand. All of the samples are cut and looped properly, the tambourines shake in the right places, the drums are blandly and precisely delivered. Run's strangled screech is dominant, if curiously angry for a man of God. His cadence is brisk, punching each line out like it were his last. What a tease Run is.
The single, which you may have heard repeatedly on your local television station, but not on radios, is "Mind on the Road", the record that samples Joan Jett. It's about doing shows and traveling, and possibly a metaphor about the journey that is life. That much is unclear, too. I'd like to say this sort of "Return of a Legend" album is a waste of time. But really, what are you going to do with that 26:46?
