2 out of 5

Label: Rhymesayers

Produced by: Various

I understand that I’ve lost any credibility in reviewing hip-hop with this ranking. I’ll admit to some ignorance up front that certainly shades this take on Musab’s (under this moniker) debut, but I do want to try to justify it outside of that shading, as much as possible.

In short: Respect The Life is… tiring. It’s production is a fascinating bag of awesome, varied beats that equally sound like their made on kitchen sink equipment – which is partially the coolest thing ever, but also somewhat distracting, adding a kind of Fischer Price cheapness to things. This is an approach that could really work if the rhymes / M.C. laid down something somewhat self aware or playful that vibed with that style, but that’s exactly the opposite of what Musab displays here.

…So I’ll get into the ignorance: my first exposure to underground hip-hop was early Atmosphere via God Loves Ugly, and I remember wondering – what sets this apart from mainstream hip-hop? Directly after this, Seven’s Travels would better clarify for me what the division might mean (kind of ironic, I guess, given that it was co-released with the technically indie, but higher profile Epitaph), but it was clear that I was defining the underground not just based on the group’s / label’s funding, but moreso the nature of the content. And I recognize that that’s not fair. Indie / underground hip-hop can be anything; it can be backpacky, battle, or gangster rap. And I think the earliest of Rhymesayers typifies that mix quite a bit, arriving during the much-less-culturally-aware 90s, and with a lot of its mainstays pretty youthful, and vibing on local celebrity. So we got consciousness, but we also got a lot of the celebratory shallowness of the genre, and to be honest, extremes of both of those really get on my nerves.

Which is to say – it took me a long time to sort of get over my expectations / judgements, and try to take hip-hop on its own terms, more directly asking: does this tell the story the artist wants? Is it told well? And are the rhymes and beats good?

It’s on those merits (I think), Musab’s Respect The Life is just such a mish-mash – and honestly pretty limited in terms of creativity, and variability – that it’s hard to get into. Sab’s singing style and bravado absolutely sells it, alongside some really inventive beats that take Ant’s soulful style and map it to video game bleeps and bloops, but this is the kind of stuff that’s fun as it passes by, but as an album… it runs thin.

This is indicated right from the intro: it’s less than two minutes, but it’s too long and accomplishes nothing. There’s no m.o. set down; it doesn’t effectively lead into the next track. Musab just kinda half-brags over a non-memorable beat. This also happens to lead into the album’s most lyrically ineffective run, which (maybe purposefully) is very sex-focused and crass, before later tracks explore a bit more. I’ll admit to being a bit of a prude and not really wanting to listen to much stuff of this nature, but I can enjoy it when it’s creative, or fun, and I get neither of that here: it’s just kinda… there. Musab talks about banging chicks, and almost rhymes “dick” with “dick.” They’re pretty simple rhymes. If you zoom out, the flow is pretty sick, and the beats are good (excepting the odd plus/minus of the production fidelity I’ve mentioned), except the intro’s problem is extended, and lasts for the whole album: we get like one verse out of Musab, and the rest is chorus. Tracks are really repetitive. You look forward to guests – of which there are many, thankfully – who can add a bit of spice to tracks.

The next portion of the disc talks about Sab’s hardships growing up, with a lot of Fuck You energy proclaiming he’s gonna keep living this hard life, ’cause it’s the only way to live. Same criticisms as above: I’m fine with this stuff if you tell the tale well, but every rhyme feels telegraphed, and, while I respect the truth of these hardships, it’s unfortunately a pretty common story in the genre, and is not related in any especially noteworthy fashion here.

Finally, after about the midway point, the album opens up a bit to piece stretch these experiences across some more expansive think pieces. I’m on guard, though, and pretty critical by this point: I don’t think the sequencing is necessarily as purposeful as I’m making it out to be – I don’t get a sense of any overarching story being told – which makes the “enlightened” tracks sitting side by side with the puerile or graphic stuff kind of hypocritical. You can have both; I just don’t feel like they’re actually coming from the same person here – it makes for an insincere impression. And the tracks don’t stop being repetitive.

All of this said, I can totally get how being part of the Minneapolis hip-hop scene, and seeing this crew take off as it happened, would’ve been amazing. And perhaps if I grew up in that same scene, I’d have a better understanding of the different sides of Sab on display on this disc. Does that correct the repetition of the tracks? No, but it’d likely make me more readily able to obey the request of the album’s title.