Fat and Lean

you may not understand what this mean to me,
but for your own good.. just lean on me
Fat Joe maintains his metamorphosis momentum from ‘also-ran’ to president of pop-hop… but the clincher is that he’s done it with the lean and mean ‘Lean Back’, na’ mean? And Remy and Joe keep the spins going with the remix guest-spot coup of the moment… Eminem and the former MM, Murder Mase. Although I’ve learned to love some of Mase’s old joints for their humor and personality he’s not going to gain any new fans with these ‘Lean’-ings. How dare he crit other MCs “hot 16s” and then follow it up with the awkwardly phrased “very great song.” Marshall on the other hand tosses his whining articulation and comes with the sizzuurrp sounding slur that he’s experimented with on many a cut but seems to perfect here. It’s a splash of his ‘dumb dude’ diction mixed with some lean and a dash of Special Ed (the Crank Yanker not The Youngest in Charge) and then thrown in a pitch-controlled blender manned by a twelve-year-old DJ. Just as his producing skills earned my props this year I thought he might have been slacking on pushing his vocals… but instead he has stepped it up again. But what makes his style switch-up more enjoyable for me is that he’s not saying anything very interesting in his verse… the words themselves could be any phoned-in cameo safely giving props to everyone in the US and then signing off with a vintage-Beastie-like ‘pistol in my pants’ line. I love it when a great MC can transform generic phrases into an interesting sonic experience. Style over content wins in this one.