XXX is often
referred to as an album of two-halves: the wild, nasally, comic Side A (the
first twelve tracks), and the introspective, melancholic Side B (track thirteen
onwards). It’s an insight that seems fair at a first glance, Brown’s
braggadocio raps about his lyrics, pussy-eating skills and partying lifestyle are
not particularly subtle or intimate in their message or delivery, instead the
reader is met with an abrasive, unapologetic style where Brown raps freely
about whatever he wants. This argument is not about to become a suggestion that
all of Side A is a subtle message into Brown’s psyche, he quite clearly lays it
bare in Side B, for to do so would deny the brilliance of some of his lines
that don’t quite meet the “conscious” rap aesthetic. Take these, for instance:
Every
time I indent, you can see the intent
Leave
your mind bent, hanging on the every sentence
Have
no apprentice, style uninherited
Laughing
at you peasants cause my penmanship is excellence
This is braggadocio rap at its finest, weaving internal
rhymes and brilliant imagery on the physicality of his words – a paradoxical
idea that is suggestive of the vivid power Brown’s words possess. The line
before Brown compares himself to Shakespeare, and whilst not exactly subtle
stuff, it’s certainly effective. Alternatively, Side A features lines like,
“Ate that bitch pussy ‘til she squirted like a dolphin.” The metaphor speaks
for itself, and what it says is down right hilarious.
Returning to the central argument, however, is the desire to
suggest that Side A is not so clearly one sided in its content, but is in fact
masterfully balanced between Brown’s comic, over-the-top style and his
introspective, emotional style, flicking between the two completely naturally.
In the opening track, XXX, Brown embodies this sentiment within the first ten
lines:
I’m
in ya bitch mouth but she fantasizing
Staring
at the skinny’s said it’s so tantalizing
Dog I’m strategizing, plotting on
throne
The
masta of the ace sitting on chrome
Dark
nights tryna sleep stomach on fire
Delusional
from hunger so I couldn’t get tired
From rapping about getting head, to his plan to be the best
in the world, to the difficulties he’s faced in getting to this in his career;
it’s a simple six lines, but the breadth of themes never feels out of place.
Brown is able to juggle this mass of contrasting images, not just within an
entire album, but within six lines – it’s exquisitely intricate lyricism, but
perhaps more difficult to appreciate. It’s largely a selection of three rhyming
couplets and some internal rhymes, with the fourth line referencing Masta Ace’s
Sitting on Chrome cleverly, twisting
the title and artist name to his own purposes. Outside of this there are no
complex metaphors, subtle rhyming techniques or entendre, instead it’s an
example of carefully structured lines. To go from the line about blowjobs to
his struggles wouldn’t work, nor would it work in the reverse, or really any other
way of restructuring these lines. The natural sense of progression that occurs
allows an image of Brown’s personality to unfold, capturing the conflicting
forces in his life without jarring the listener.
Returning to ‘Pac Blood’, these two lines stand out as an
another example of Brown’s balancing act: “Make a grown man cry with strength
of the words”, and “Tongue bring torture to men, women and children”. The lines
come in separate verses, but are tied together by the commonality of Brown’s
ability to affect the listener with his lyrics. The former expressing his
ability to emotionally affect the clichéd image of tough men in their intimate,
sad honesty – something like this from the final track 30, “And now a nigga
thirty so y’all don’t think that hurt me/That the last ten years I been so
fucking stressed”. The latter is about the brutally obscene aspect of his raps,
the supposed offensive nature of them enough to cause people physical pain –
“Love a feminist bitch, oh, it get my dick hard/So no apologies for all the
misogyny/I just want your company to come and watch some porn with me” These
lyrics from ’Outer Space’ offering a cruelly funny juxtaposition in his use of
“feminist bitch”, which whilst certainly designed to cause offense, reinforce the
physical impact of his lyrics. In these two lines from ‘Pac Blood’ Brown’s
self-referential style is both braggadocio and introspective, taking pride in
his ability to offend and move the listener. His lines become a meta-commentary
on the recurring moments of the album, laid out in Side A where Side B lacks
the thematic room to do so.
As mentioned some songs on Side A aren’t about a balancing
act, they simply exist for one purpose; ‘I Will’ is Brown’s bordering-on-the-grotesque
ode to pussy eating, line after line detailing precisely every element of his
process [my facetiousness is obvious here]. ‘Bruiser Brigade’ is a
grime-influenced hype track, a celebration of machismo, alcohol and excess that
isn’t trying to do anything other than be enjoyed. In fact the majority of the
tracks of Side A might seem imbalanced, against the grain of what I am arguing
for, without any sense of the balance that the album offers as a whole. Brown’s
first three tracks are clearly balanced as a whole, swinging back and forth between
the two styles already laid out, but other tracks leave the balancing act to
just one or two lines, details that aren’t necessarily noticeable until
multiple re-listens. Detroit 187 is noticeable for its lines about Brown’s
“dick so big left stretch marks on her jaw”, but his socio-political side slips
through about the state of Detroit in the late 20th-early 21st
century. “Murders all the time is all I see” and ‘I’m so institutionalized/ I
wake up 6 a.m. because I think it’s chow time”. These two lines are the best
examples from the track, delivered in a vehemently matter of fact manner that
they don’t really register on an initial listen. What they reveal is Brown’s
real life situation, growing up in an environment where murder has become
dehumanised due to its prominence, as well as the state of the
institutionalized prison system in America where young black men are
incarcerated for so long that they become indoctrinated into the prison
lifestyle. Brown returns to this socio-political discussion more explicitly
later in tracks such as ‘Fields’ and ‘Scrap or Die’, but like much of the album
the foundation for Side B is offered, if subtly, in Side A.
Side A is littered with examples where the oft-cited album
of two-halves is not so clearly black and white. Side B often receives the
majority of the plaudits for its painfully intimate descriptions of drug
addiction, social crises and mental health issues, the immediate connection to
the listener far easier to grasp. What results from this is the sense that Side
A is quite often forgotten, and whilst I think the consistent strength of Side
B is perhaps a factor in this, so is the desire to buy into the cut-throat
belief that this is only an album of two halves. Side A has far more layers
than that and deserves to be treated with the reverence and respect that this
offers, embodying the brilliant balancing act Brown pulls off in the album as a
whole. In the words of Andre 3000, Side A has something to say, and that’s all
I got to say.
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