Following in the footsteps of his one time collaborator turned foe Paul Wall, US rapper Chamillionaire has exploded out of Houston’s underground mixtape scene with his first major label debut, bagging the number one spot on the Billboard charts, going platinum, and shifting over 3.5 million ringtones in the process.
The self proclaimed “Mixtape Messiah” and “Truth from Texas” claims the secret behind his success is his willingness to go against the grain and cook up something fresh.
“Everybody is trying to make the same record like ‘In Da Club’,” he recently told Billboard.com, “(but) every artist who has blown up real big came with something that was new."
"Look at 50 Cent. He was a guy who had been shot in the mouth and had bullets in him.
"Even if I did work with a big producer, you try not to do the same kind of records as everybody else.”
They say:
HipHopDX: “A good album from one of the south’s most promising artists.”
Rolling Stone: “If success is the best revenge in the current Houston hungry climate, Chamillionaire seems destined for his.”
Living with Style: “If you are one of those people who generalize rap as dumb guys bragging about cars then this is the album for you.”
We say:
What immediately grabs you about Chamillionaire is his intricate rhyme scheme, the way he fluently shifts tempos and styles in a heartbeat, and his unspoken pledge to remain true to his southern hip hop roots while always moving forward.
He also has a knack for clever lyricism, often sidestepping the genre’s clichéd thug attitude to imbue these snare heavy cuts with real substance, such as on ‘Void in My Life’ where he recalls the spiritual confusion he felt as a child while being raised by a Muslim father and Christian mother (“Your father says he’s a Muslim, mother says she’s a Christian/The Bible or the Quran, which one would you be pickin?”).
Then there’s the droll observation on ‘Grown and Sexy: “You’ve got that perfect face, a perfect shape, and perfect smile/But as soon as you turned around/There’s something that I realised/You look better from behind.”
Yet the album is not without its faults. ‘Peepin’ Me’ and even ‘Grown and Sexy’ veer off into Babyface pop territory and are strictly for the ladies only, while the album’s overall running time can occasionally feel unbearably long, proving you really can have too much of a good thing.
But in the end it’s his storytelling ability and enigmatic delivery that makes this fascinating enough to withstand repeated plays.
Like this? Try these:
Twista – The Day After
50 Cent – Get Rich or Die Tryin’
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony – The Art of War
RELEASED
7th August 2006
LABEL
Motown
POSTED...
Thu 3 Aug 2006 at 3:38pm
