Next to Keak Da Sneak's catalog-- solo joints, albums with Bay Area trio 3XKrazy, guest spots with E-40 and others-- occasionally indecipherable MCs Lil Wayne or Young Dro sound like Garrison Keillor. Less a croak than a gravel whistle, Keak's voice takes off over bubbling, restless hyphy and hyphy-esque melodies (it'd get subsumed and lost in anything East Coast and Gothic), and Deified, in all its practical KOCH-approved wisdom, never strays from Keak's wheelhouse. Bay Area native Young Mozart produced all but two tracks on the album, and as Deified runs through its kinetic 23-three song, 80-minute walkabout from the sopping-wet handclaps of "19 Dummy" to withering G-funk on "N Fronta Ya Mama House" to album-closing "Super Hyphy" and its overpowering teeter-totter synth, the record flexes a crude functionality. Deified's sound is so big and so unconcerned with the men rapping above it (the forgettable guest roster includes Paul Wall, Daz, Chingo Bling, and Messy Marv) that it only makes room for snippet's of Keak's barking.
We can pick out references to police horses, ghost riding, and Smeagol-sound-alike boasting (like on the whipping, irresistible "X2") for a handful of bars before the album slides back into sonic burial: Keak snarling and moaning, nearly wordless; famished keyboards and 808s beating the landscape senseless. But no one listens to a Keak album the way they listen to an Aesop Rock joint. Deified is built for sweatbox clubs and car systems. Dizzying, effective songs ("X2", "Blurpt", "Who Started This", "That Go") far outnumber the for-the-ladies concessions ("Nothing Without You", "Her Name"). While you'd never call a rap album this long "nimble," Deified's banquet of sounds and songs goes about its business swiftly, skit-less, with minimal delusion and with maximum pace.
The Bay area's sound, however, hasn't ignited the out-of-towners in the way, say, those from Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, or Memphis, have, and-- possibly Turf Talk aside-- in this contracting, compressing marketplace, it's not likely to convert any listeners not already conversational in its quirks and vocab. That will hardly matter to Keak: He's been a rapper since high school, and, depending on who you ask, he coined the term "hyphy" in 1998. He probably doesn't mind that if Deified were filed in the dance or electronic section, he'd win as many new fans as a choice position in your local Best Buy. Keak falls into that estuary of regional rappers that are big for their local pool, but not quite vicious, unique, or just plain brilliant enough for a chunk of the major pop market (see also: Redman, Slim Thug, and Z-Ro).
Keak's relatively low profile is likely down to that voice-- occasionally unintelligible, spouting frequently sloppy lines or dense slang. He's not anonymous though-- Keak's throat is plenty memorable-- but his tracks are often without hopes, fears, stories, or a personality that last longer than three minutes. Maybe that's the point: Deified may be Keak's last, best shot at a nation-wide audience, and it's pure comfort zone: Keak as the peak of a sonic landscape, rising above a plain of burps and bassline twitters like a cold mountain-- rough, frozen, faceless, and iconic.
