When Biggie once declared himself "heartthrob never, black and ugly as ever," I thought for years he was saying "fat" instead of "black." The actual lyric is more pointed, bringing race and class into the mix of Big's offhand interrogation of the American ideal of "sexy," but my mishearing makes the same basic point: This mountainous figure with a lazy eye and a bulldog's grimace was one of the most unlikely sex symbols of the 1990s, a "fat motherfucker" who could step to a chiseled god like Tupac Shakur. As anyone with crooked teeth or a paunch knows, self-possession, wit, and swagger count for a lot when you're looking for love.
And in the history of unlikely rapping sex symbols-- a few internet maniacs like John Darnielle aside-- Biggie is perhaps only rivaled by Winston Foster, a Jamaican dancehall deejay cursed with a name he flipped into a money-minting blessing. For Foster, born an albino in a country where that particular biological quirk drops you to the bottom of the social rung, any sort of stardom as a professional musician was going to come from a knowing novelty appeal and a dogged, talented persistence. Recording a string of early, pre-digital dancehall hits with a producer named Henry "Junjo" Lawes and his house band, the Roots Radics, Yellowman was the Biggie of his era: a gun-toting cocksman in a wide-brimmed hat who fit none of the usual images of a swaggering pop phenomenon. This gave him instant novelty appeal, but it was his immense natural skill that actually put him over the top. Being a fat dude in a body conscious society is one thing; Foster's audiences were first downright shocked and outraged-- and then delighted-- to hear a supposedly sexually-undesirable "outcast" rapping about wrecking pum pums and toting heat, leaning through Kingston in a big ol' Caddie.
Most Wanted is a new Yellowman greatest hits collection from Greensleeves, and since the man never made a Ready to Die, it's an excellent point of entry to his mackadocious island aesthetic. But go in expecting Biggie's jump-up machine gun funk and you'll be surprised; these wobbly tracks-- 16 variations of drum, bass, and Yellowman's brags and boasts repeated with the metronomic surety of "This Is Why I'm Hot"-- have the waist-winding sway of the best old school reggae. For dance tunes, Yellowman records sure are slow. Modern dancehall and soca bounces off the walls to a diet of, as one recent riddim put it, "Red Bull and Guinness". These are spliff-calmed, afternoon-nap-in-the-hammock grooves. (The inclusion of several six- or seven-minute 12" mixes only accentuates the repetition, complete with occasionally patience-testing head-nodder instrumental outros.) And the Roots Radics craft rhythms like they're expert set designers commissioned by a theater company with enough money for two props and one spotlight. Yellowman's the star, and the music mostly stays out of his way on stage, save for some dub special effects or keyboard lighting tricks.
What made Yellowman that kind of star is his larger-than-life, chest-puffing, can-you-top-this, I-will-steal-your-woman-and-she'll-love-it shit-talking, ever more outlandish because he knew no one took him seriously to begin with. And so this is exceptionally dirty music sometimes. When he sings "gimme the morning ride" that "slips and slides," he's not singing about a lazy country drive or a horseback ride across the beach. Not an enlightened or even classy dude-- but like Biggie's gangsta moll fidelity fantasies on "Me and My Bitch", though thankfully without the offer of paternal fellatio-- Yellow does dream about a ghetto domestic partnership where "me cook the chicken and you cook the rice" on "Yellowman Getting Married", even if his vision of martial bliss is less about hiding his guns from the cops and closer to that of his sly sex chat descendent Vybz Kartel. You know, picturing him and his lady in a tree, f-u-c-k-i-n-g.
But of all the words you could use to describe Yellowman's flow, "nimble" and "inventive" would be among the last; like most deejays of his early-80s era, he chats almost exclusively in a flat, mid-tempo monotone, heavy on the catch phrase, which stylistically makes him less like Biggie and more like the dapper snapper rappers of the dirty south. Like a Dem Franchize or D4L album, if exponentially wittier, Most Wanted's minimalism gets a little exhausting by the end. And also like snap music, Yellowman's best tune is also his biggest hit, "Zungguzungguzungguzeng", and if you want to know if Most Wanted is for you, try chanting that alliterative run-on in your own best monotone for as long as you can stand it. It's the best because that hypnotic hook is the most hypnotic, and the beat is the deadliest, adding some fierce flashes of phased guitar without compromising the basic groove established at the record's opening. Everyone could use some of Yellow's rub-a-dub style in their life, but an hour or more might have you zungguzenging all the way to the loony bin. Most Wanted is the kind of album for which the phrase "zoning out" was invented.
