This is another great little strength of Ro’s-while he paints with just a few colors, he continually finds new ways to blend them. Lead single “Women Men” (which cops a beat from 50 Cent’s “Many Men ”) hits all the best Z-Ro targets: He talks shit, he sings, and the mood floats between celebratory and menacing, without one eclipsing the other. He embellishes the feeling, less the storytelling. It would be tempting to suggest Ro’s material mostly sticks to a few topics to his detriment-haters, baby-mama drama, disloyal members of his crew (sometimes these people overlap)-but what has separated Ro’s music from more traditional street rap, even among fellow introspective Houston contemporaries like Trae tha Truth and Scarface, has been his uncanny knack for taking just about any phrase and building a sweeping hook with it. This is Drankin’ & Drivin’s strongest suit-Ro delivers a few knockout hooks, addresses his haters, and it’s onto the next song. My favorite version of Ro has been the guy who turned “I hate you bitch” into a gentle, reflective, melodic lyric. That's a fine enough role to play, but as the world around him downsizes and constricts, he's clamming up, retreating home and phoning it in.Z-Ro, legally known as Joseph McVey, sometimes calls himself “Rother Vandross,” and it’s more than a pun: Ro’s gorgeous, languid baritone frequently lapses into singing, and his best music has featured a hard-hitting hook sung by the man himself. Z-Ro has always been satisfied playing the brassy, noncommittal grump.
All the shining lights of the Houston scene sport something ineffable: Scarface's transcendent violence Devin's beat-poet-leer Trae's whorls of emotional concision Big Moe's druggy, violet sunshine. Lee can't summon any suitable nostalgia, which makes Z-Ro seem even more alone.
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Dean is totally absent from Crack and other veteran Houston producers like Mr. There, the underrated long-time Scarface producer Mike Dean laid out a chain of warmer, blues-inflected guitar and drum loops for Z-Ro's moans. Z-Ro at least had his strengths catered to on 2005's Let the Truth Be Told. The effect is dulling, frustrating, and more than a little repulsive. Where, say, Scarface, may hold a mournful note for an extra beat, Z-Ro instantly flips into a stream of pithy taunts and complaints. As soon has he resonates with real sentiment- on divorce: "I don't give a fuck as long as my child knows me"- the album swoops back into dropsied howls about those suspicious club hos and these disrespectful young corner boys. On Crack he scoffs at dancing on "If That's How You Feel": "My body don't move like that, so Im'a chill/ Im'a play the wall, leaving all to dancing to y'all." He'd prefer it if no one called and no one spoke four wheels are typically all the company he needs.īut for all his confession Z-Ro brushes his breakthroughs aside. Z-Ro's hook is that the intimacy in his raps- perpetually commemorating a handful of dead collaborators and friends, worshiping solitude and seemingly dismissing all worldly pleasures (except, of course, kush, candy paint, and lean)- dips into weakness. The would-be ladies-jam "Baby Girl" reeks with clumps of digital sparkle and hubby-talk: "She follow my lead/ And respect the fact that I wear the pants." "Here We Go" features an inexplicable pan flute and a lifeless snare.
The samples are all tamped down and strip-mined in their reincarnations on Crack.
The raided discs include the last two Trae albums and Trae and Z-Ro's two collaborations, 2003's A.B.N (Assholes by Nature) and this summer's downpour of noir, It Is What It Is. Z-Ro produces eight of the album's 15 tracks, and leans on heaps of previous compositions. It can't make its terrain of solipsistic gangsters and Houston beltway-sulk hum with emotion or its layers of horns and hi-hats shake with any color. Case in point is Z-Ro's sixth on Rap-A-Lot, Crack, which is drab, shabby and more than a little lonely ("I smoke purple stuff alone in my room"). For Z-Ro, who first appeared in the corners of DJ Screw's chain of drizzling, endless mid-1990s classics (most of which are now conveniently repackaged and available at your nearest Best Buy- start with the 3xCD June 27), and has released five albums already on Rap-A-Lot, the whole world is starting to sound like it's closing up shop.
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