The big story in rap last year was Houston. For years, the city had developed its own aesthetic, code words, and sui-generis star system, all while out of sight of the East Coast's cultural gatekeepers. When the rest of the country suddenly took notice, local stars Mike Jones and Paul Wall became national stars, and rappers all over the world started talking about codeine cough syrup and DJ Screw. The same thing is now supposed to happen to California's Bay Area. The region has its own sound, hyphy, which involves lots of berserk, scattered drum-machines, enormous synth-riffs, and brittle, burbling hooks. Like Houston, the city also has its own look and slang and locally based distribution networks. Lil Jon certainly did his best to package the scene and sell it to the rest of the world when he signed E-40, a local legend whose claim to national fame had previously been inventing handfuls of popular hip-hop slang terms. But the album has been out for a month now, and it's not even halfway to gold, so the results are in: The Bay Area is not this year's Houston.
The problem is pretty easy to hear in the first five tracks of My Ghetto Report Card-- the album's pure hyphy section. Lil Jon and Bay Area scene-general Rick Rock slap together a set of monster-bangers, but the effect is more exhausting than exhilarating. "Yay Area" sounds like robots malfunctioning: frantic off-kilter drums, high-pitched synth squeals, gurgling staccato vocal samples. This stuff has a frenzied, delirious tension and a striking futuristic sheen, but it has none of the sensual restraint of Timbaland, who is a clear influence. Rock and hyphy-version Lil Jon have no idea how to use silence; their tracks are all push and no pull. After about 30 minutes, it begins to feel like an aural version of three cans of Sparks. On the album's second half, Lil Jon is back to his typical tracks: old-school 808s, evil keyboards, sly R&B; whistles, but it's not enough to save the record.
E-40 himself doesn't really help matters, basically rapping in Bernie Mac's making-fun-of-white-people voice-- a nervous adenoidal yammer. And he doesn't ride beats so much as fall over them, sloshing his wavery vowels around so much that they sound seasick. 40 loves words, and some of his lines are so dense with regional slang that they barely make sense: "One of my youngsters just got popped with a thumper/ They tryna wash it/ They talking football numbers." He can be humurous ("I'm a couple of tacos short of a combination") or incisive ("The law ain't concerned/ They love us hustlers and dealers/ They wanna tear our houses down so they can build IKEAs"), and he's often a lot of fun. But his goofy-ass flow doesn't lend itself much to serious sentiments. On "Black Boi", he delivers this: "In my days, I was raised in the Church/ Mama did what she could to keep us off the turf/ But it ain't no one to blame/ But Noreaga and Reagan and rock cocaine." On paper, it looks great, but 40 still sounds as if he's talking about partying. That voice can get old fast, and Lil Jon tries to address the issue by loading virtually every track with guest appearances, but it doesn't work: the guests either utterly school 40 (Too Short, Bun B) or clutter up the track with clumsy nonsense (Juelz Santana, Budda).
My Ghetto Report Card has a few great moments. Rick Rock often makes great use of samples: a Digable Planets vocal loop on "Yay Area", Bernard Herrmann's Psycho strings on "Gouda". And E-40's 18-year-old producer son Droop-E turns in one of the album's strongest tracks with "Sick Wid It II", a streaky hyphy banger that manages not to sound way too ADD. On "U and Dat", another standout, 40 himself is barely a factor, as Lil Jon's sidelong crunk'n'b track and T-Pain's indelibly sticky vocal hook do all the work. But the album runs way too long at nearly 80 minutes-- six of which are devoted to a soul-crushing song called "Gimmie Head", all anemic organ tweets and TMI lyrics ("Shoot it everywhere while I beat my meat/ In ya face, in ya hair, all over the sheets"), and all the party-up fun stuff starts feeling like teeth-gritted forced hedonism long before it should. If hyphy ever does have its cultural moment, it won't be because of this album; it'll be despite it.
