Has a rapper ever suffered a more embarrassing identity crisis than Everlast? The fella went from
slangin' pizza pies to
drinkin' Guinness pints to
singin' like Chris Rea to
rebranding himself as Necro & Ill Bill's Uncle Doughie. When his
Whitey Ford Sings The Blues album dropped and the videos for
What It's Like and
Ends were in rotation on MTV I was equally amused and appalled by the sight of him in a cowboy hat strumming an acoustic guitar. The cracka who made
Syndication, that's what I called E'. But now he's wearin' a Stetson hat like Paul C. Revisiting
What It's Like and
Ends decades on minus the videos, I'm gonna have to slang humble pie and hyperbole in the same sentence: both songs are #actually killer choonz which are so obvious prototypes for Bubba Sparxxx's
Deliverance.
Ends is
THE jam 4 me: an ode to lost souls who've been crushed by the 'Murican Dream with a nifty interpolation of
a Whodini classic.
Everlast - Ends
(From Whitey Ford Sings The Blues album; 1998)
Another thing
Whitey Ford Sings The Blues shares with Bubba's
Deliverance is that it features a bonus track which is so good, it should have been the album's street single.
Deliverance has
Disappear,
Whitey Ford Sings The Blues has
Next Man. Like
Ends, it's another song which is an ode to lost souls who've been crushed by the 'Murican Dream, but instead of sounding like some proto-
Deliverance shit, it's delivered in the style of
Sporty Thievz. No lie, this shit sounds like it coulda/shoulda had a fish-eye lens Hype Williams video.
Everlast - Next Man
(From Whitey Ford Sings The Blues album; 1998)
Never heard the whole Whitey Ford album but got sent a promo sampler thingy before it dropped and I still rate Praise The Lord + the one with Sadat X.
ReplyDeleteOne of the other Blues type tracks features backing vocals from Bronx Style Bob. Alas, Nat The Cat doesn't appear on the album.
DeleteJust heard a track off it featuring Sadat + Casual. Swap out Eric for Grand Puba and that could've been a banger.
ReplyDeleteAKA the Beat Bop beatjack. There's a few throwbacks to the 83 to 85 era on the album.
DeleteHonestly, I like most of the album. Even the Rock-Rap song Hot To Death.
I definitely copped that Whitey Ford CD when it dropped but it didn't merit many repeat plays, I never ripped it to my computer and now haven't got a clue in which crate/pile it's resided for 23+ years. I remember it being corny as heck (even by rapper-tries-doing-propermusic standards). I did though really like the first La Coka Nostra and "Love war and the ghost of Whitey Ford" albums.
ReplyDeleteI reckon it might be one of my favourite 1998 albums now 🧐
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