Several new, creatively like-minded, fundamentally skillful Hip Hop acts emerged in 1994. The genre as a whole had become far more colorful thanks to pop radio and music video success.
Many of the rhymers during that era were more fixated on camera image and platinum sales than simply being the best mining the steel.
Scarface dropped The Diary, his third solo studio album, near the close of that year. With this release he proclaimed himself the best without ever actually saying it.
What he did say was he’d never seen a man cry ‘til “I Seen a Man Die”. Catchy, clever hooks were always welcomed but they’d become trendy. Face kept it simple, and in his verses told a dark, at times uncomfortable story that frightened listeners.
Before Scarface describes a fatal hit sure to make the nightly news on “Jesse James”, the song’s classical piano lead is ominously backed by murmurs of a real police radio.
Face went beyond keeping it real on life-or-death revenge rhyme “No Tears”. For those who claimed this funky, bluesy set for their collection, they learned just how far.
“You’re going up against a stacked deck, n****, now where’s your manpower,” Scarface rips on NO Joe-produced “The White Sheet” which refers to a cloth generally used to cover a dead body.
Ironically, “Hand of the Dead Body” featuring Ice Cube and Devin the Dude is another standout.
‘The Diary’ was as poetic and it was blunt. |THIS.
[By Mr. Joe Walker]
