Rap game Sid James

It would have been churlish to begrudge Devin The Dude's post-RAP-A-LOT fall off when his run of LP's from Fadanuf Fa Erybody!! in 1994 to Waitin' To Inhale in 2007 was a better succession of albums than most of the canonized G.O.A.T's have in their catalogues. Dook had done a helluva job for 13 straight years so he'd earned the right to fade into irrelevance as a recording artist on some Texan Too $hort type shit : a lovable wilted veteran in the diminishing returns years of his career who, at the very best, has a one-good-song-every-other-album average.

So nearly 7 years after Devin's last great CD it comes as an utter shock that One For The Road has a grip of good songs. There are no surprises to be found on the album itself since this a new Devin The Dude project not Aceyalone's latest full length of Mister Señor Love Daddy impersonations over Mark Ronson-lite cod-Funk, but there's nowt wrong with a rapper bringing out their standard array of party tricks for the umpteenth time as long as there's some good tunes involved. I'm Just Gettin' Blowed and Probably Shouldn't Have are the most quintessentially Devin jams with the latter featuring excellent usage of the word shithouse in its chorus, but it's when Devin forgoes rhyming to get his Anythang on again with Hear The Sound and Still Waitin' that the album done takes flight, especially when he coos sweet nothings to some lass he's been itching to blap on the former :

Devin The Dude - Hear The Sound
(From One For The Road album; 2013)


IMHO this is what would happen if Devin were to sing a saucy letter from a 70s copy of Playboy over the sort of lush Country-Rap & Bullshit production that was Mike Dean's bread 'n' butter throughout the noughties before KanYe came callin'.