My Gut Reaction: Big Daddy Kane - Long Live The Kane (June 21, 1988)

My longtime two readers might find themselves staring at the title of this post and shouting to nobody in particular, "What the fuck?!" Normally, I would have the same reaction: how can something be considered for a My Gut Reaction post if it came out twenty fucking years ago? It's a simple explanation, really. For those of you that peruse the comments that other readers leave (which I sometimes respond to), you may recall a while back when I mentioned that I had never actually heard any Big Daddy Kane albums ever. Never ever. Is that the sound of my hip hop credibility being thrown into the wood chipper? Hell no it isn't, because I'm man enough to admit that there are albums within the history of our chosen genre that I simply never listened to, unlike some other bloggers that pretend that they have heard everything under the sun. However, I'm taking the viewpoint of a newbie in the hip hop game, someone whose only exposure to rap music is what is played on the radio and what I write about on my blog (there are a couple of you out there), who has heard of some of the so-called "living legends" but have never had the opportunity to hear any material by them. As such, I found a copy of Big Daddy Kane's debut, Long Live The Kane.

So, how in the hell did Max avoid Big Daddy Kane, you may ask? Well, I'm not oblivious, if that's what you're wondering. My introduction to hip hop started with the West Coast (to which you may then ask, "Why does Max have such a bias toward the East Coast when he started in the West?"), and I made the transition to New York rap after liking what I had heard. I knew about the Juice Crew, and, in fact, have albums from some of the other members of the clique, but never paid attention to Kane's back catalog (even though I found him to be a beast on the mic). I just never bothered with Kane, simply because there was/is a lot of music out there, and the next time Kane appeared in my subconscious was around the time he appeared in Madonna's Sex book, which drained my interest completely. (Vanilla Ice also appeared in that book, making that project the seventy-fourth instance of how working with Robert Van Winkle, no matter how inadvertent, will ruin your career, unless you name happens to be "Madonna".)

Kane's career tapered off at that point, but he popped up sporadically early on in the new millennium, with hard-hitting cameos that proved that he sounded as good as ever. With that, I officially became interested again, but it took me until now to find the disc around my way, since I try not to pay full retail for anything, and was unable to find it used anywhere. I suppose that should have been a good sign.

Long Live The Kane was produced in full by Marley Marl, and found lots of success in hip hop circles upon its initial release. Five of the ten tracks on here also appear on a Big Daddy Kane Greatest Hits compilation, if that's any indication of how good the album sounds.

And it's not.

1. LONG LIVE THE KANE
Probably because they pop up so infrequently, I tend to automatically like albums that skip the unnecessary rap album intro, although that business move does not a good album make. The beat is made up of sampled drums and scratches. That's all. Kane goes off for nearly five fucking minutes, and other than the corny Tony the Tiger reference near the beginning (which probably sounded corny even in 1988), I found myself appreciating the music's simplicity, which nicely contrasted with Kane's boasts, which are anything but simple.

2. RAW (REMIX)
Marley Marl, who also produced the original version of "Raw", essentially keeps the same beat, but adds a couple more elements to it (namely, the narration sample), and Kane drops a brand new first verse, while the remaining three verses were all part of the original song. That's right, kids, Kane spits four verses over this instrumental. These days, the kids usually spit one-and-a-half verses and fill in the gaps by commanding people to dance to whatever crappy moves they choreographed themselves while high on kush. I prefer the original version, since it's more to the point, but I appreciate the fact that Kane dropped some new lyrics.

3. SET IT OFF
I had already known that Ghostface Killah swiped this monster of a beat for Theodore Unit's "'88 Freestyle", but had never heard the source material until today. Now, I consider Ghost to be one of the better emcees performing today, but Kane proves that the beat belonged to him by demolishing this motherfucker. Good show.

4. THE DAY YOU'RE MINE
This slow jam is unnecessary as fuck. What the hell were Marley Marl and Big Daddy Kane thinking?

5. ON THE BUGGED TIP (FEAT SCOOB LOVER)
So many references to flattops, so little time. This shit is just funny, but that's the point: it comes off as Kane and Scoob Lover just saying random shit to make each other laugh, kind of like those Saturday Night Live performers that feel they haven't done their job unless they make a fellow cast member crack up while performing live on stage. Speaking of which: Jimmy Fallon? Never really funny. In my opinion, he always broke character while on SNL because he was a shitty actor, not because his cast mates were trying to make him laugh. But I'm getting off track.

6. AIN'T NO HALF STEPPIN'
If I'm not mistaken, this was the most popular of the songs released from Long Live The Kane. I can see why: it's the most radio-friendly joint on here, simply because there's somewhat of a melody to be heard, and ladies could dance to this shit pretty easily. Don't take that "radio-friendly" tag to mean that the song is weak, though: Marley Marl did his thing here, and Kane sounds as good as he has on the album so far (with the exception of that horrid "The Day You're Mine").

7. I'LL TAKE YOU THERE
A pretty liberal sampling of the Staple Singers song of the same name: Kane may as well have just inserted the original song onto this album, since it comes off as rapping while the song plays in the background anyway. I wasn't really feeling this one.

8. JUST RHYMIN' WITH BIZ (FEAT BIZ MARKIE)
Hey, my two readers! Remember the write-up for Def Squad's El Nino? Their track "Rhymin' With Biz" was a direct homage to this track, which sounds exactly the same as that more recent song (which basically means that Erick Sermon, himself a well-known producer of old-school rap hits, can also be a pretty good mimic). Truth be told, I preferred The Biz to Kane, but I actually liked the Def Squad version more, since Kane's lyrics sound like he was too close to the microphone and nobody bothered to clean up the distortion prior to Long Live The Kane's release.

9. MISTER CEE'S MASTER PLAN
The mandatory track that paid respects to Kane's deejay, DJ Mister Cee, who, up until the time that he assisted in the recording of Long Live The Kane, worked at Airborne Express. That's quite a career shift, if you ask me. The fact that Mister Cee had something to do with breaking The Notorious B.I.G. to the hip hop world, though, cements his place in the Hall of Fame.

10. WORD TO THE MOTHER(LAND)
It would seem that "Mister Cee's Master Plan" would have been a proper album outro, but we're left with one final song, Big Daddy Kane's Afrocentric song, which was all the rage in the 1980's. The lyrics aren't as boastful as the rest of the album, but it proves that Kane wasn't all about talking shit. All in all, not bad at all.

THE LAST WORD: Well, don't I feel like an ass. Long Live The Kane is almost consistently entertaining (but "The Day You're Mine" is godawful). Marley Marl's production is pretty classic (rap fans will find a lot of musical moments on this disc that more recent artists have co-opted), and Big Daddy Kane was a revelation in his time, I'm sure, but he still sounds better than most of the newer rappers today. All in all, this shit is pretty good, and is highly recommended to literally everyone in the world. However, kids, be forewarned: just because there is no 'Parental Advisory' sticker on the album cover doesn't mean that Kane and company are family-friendly: you may not want to give this to Grandma for Christmas (unless she's an extremely cool grandmother).

-Max