His Cannabis Club card (probably) reads "Jesse James," but Seattle rapper Nacho Picasso willingly shares a name with something you'd expect to find at a Johnny Rockets in Barcelona. You will either think the alias is awesome or awful. There is no in-between. Yet it's instantly memorable and more fitting than anything that references a Jack Black/Lucha Libre vehicle has any right to be.
Since Rick Rubin tried to create the "worst shit ever," rap has a long history of the highbrow-lowbrow game. Or what Ghostface Killah called the "smart dumb cat." Robinson is Nacho and Picasso, part fast food, part real deal. He is the hardcore hood nerd, the walking talking paradox writ large. Or as he describes himself on For the Glory: "Think like George Carlin/ Dress like Carlton/ Ball like Damon/ And wild like Marlon."
Nacho openly claims he's an arrogant asshole, not to be trusted, a bridge burner, and a numbnuts. He dedicates his orgies to Dionysus. His album cover is a picture of him riding a horse dressed as Sir Lance-A-Lot, while flanked by a Harry Potter castle and three nude goddesses. The latter continue Sir Mix-A-Lot's proud Emerald City tradition.
Picasso proves that you don't need to practice the art of storytelling when you've mastered the art of saying nothing. And For the Glory is basically a paean to girls, guns, tattoos, chronic, and comics. There is an entire song, "Marvel", wherein Picasso basically compares himself to every summer blockbuster of the last decade. While it should feel like second-rate MF Doom, Nacho spits slick and (partially) revelatory internal rhymes. He repeats, "Smoking/ Reading comic books," until it becomes mantra, like the kid from the cover of OutKast's ATLiens grown up.
If anything, For the Glory is a snub-nosed self-portrait. Picasso condenses information into one or two bars with the ease of a 1990s 5 Percent rapper. "He's been a bad guy/ Since his dad died." The self-aware scumbag redeemed through his honesty and arrant goofiness. On "Moor Gang", he describes his life as "Big butts and boobs/ Blunts and booze/ Watching Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze/ With my Steven Urkel frames and custom-made shoes." And he even has the restraint to refrain from a Vanilla Ice punchline.
That's the thing about Picasso, he knows how to vividly render an image and largely avoid cliché. Even when he resorts to the tired mobster/rapper dualities of "Benjamin Segal", he avoids the obvious Tony Montana trap. Circa 2011, the norm is rappers so tatted-up they might as well be married to Sandra Bullock. But Picasso is one of the few who makes it seem like more than fashion accessory. On "Sweaters", the self-proclaimed "tat in the hat" describes his body as a timeline and his face as something ageless. Later, he says he's inked like a Rorschach blot and a fourth-grade desk.
Half of the record captures Picasso as the affable stoner drawling in a seen-it-all baritone about 1980s professional wrestlers and characters from Half Baked. The guy who would insert a lesser remembered clip of White Men Can't Jump just for the fuck of it. The other side is the ruthless hustler whose car "looks like Iceland," who lashes out against "bitches who say that he looks like Chris Brown." The Black Flag-shirted, bare knuckle-gypsy, who shares his dead dad's love of anarchy. The end result is language-drunk and spliff-lit disorientation in the cold vein of vintage Cam'ron, late-period Curren$y, and the post-Def Jux disorderly conduct of Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire.
Picasso references his internal turmoil but never delves too deep. Nor does he need to. In his worldview, there is little nostalgia for the past or dreams of the future-- just the weary gray of the hustle. Lyrically, Seattle doesn't factor in much, other than a stray reference to being from the city where they "bust heads and clean clocks." Thankfully, producers Blue Sky Black Death and Raised by Wolves provide the requisite Pacific Northwestern pallor, providing moody beats that suture "Stepfather Factory"-era El-P to the mercury float of Clams Casino.
During a year in which Shabazz Palaces has earned Seattle hip-hop more buzz since the last time slackers wore flannel, Picasso grabs his fair share of the spotlight. For the Glory is one of the best rap debuts of the year, one that simultaneously manages to say everything but reveal nothing. Or as George Carlin would have said: Language is just a tool for concealing the truth.
