November 6, 2008

Ice Cube - Kill At Will EP (1990)




So the question is: do you accept Ice Cube's gift gratefully, or do you decline and walk away slowly, with your back against the wall? What's the correct way to thank someone for giving you a gun? Is a pie sufficient? A shiny gold pen? Do you hand-write the thank you note, or is e-mail the way to go?

While you ponder those queries, I'll let you know that Ice Cube dropped his Kill At Will EP shortly after his debut solo disc, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, found its way onto the love lists of critics nationwide. It helped to maintain his status in the game while he was appearing on screens as Doughboy in Boyz N The Hood, John Singleton's epic street tale (okay, maybe not epic, but it's still pretty fucking good).

Kill At Will ended up being the first hip hop EP that sold enough copies to earn a golden RIAA plaque, which was shortly followed by a platinum plaque. Although sales alone isn't considered to be much of a barometer when it comes to creativity, Kill At Will is often considered to be some of O'Shea's best work.

Insert introductory sentence here.

1. ENDANGERED SPECIES (TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE) (REMIX) (FEAT CHUCK D)
Considering the fact that Chuck D contributes new lyrics, this remix is better than it has any right to be, but the original track hit a lot harder, in my opinion.

2. JACKIN' FOR BEATS
Plays exactly as it reads: O'Shea steals beats from a ton of other acts and rhymes over them all with ease, a practice that is still done to death today by today's artists, although it tends to be limited to mixtape freestyles and not proper albums. Doughboy even finds the time to jack "The Humpty Dance", which is just funny to me. This shit remains pretty damn good today.

3. GET OFF MY DICK & TELL YO BITCH TO COME HERE (REMIX)
The original, for what it's worth, is much better.

4. THE PRODUCT
Cube's lyrics, which, admittedly, aren't that great on here anyway, are lost amid a mess of a Bomb Squad beat, which sounds as if they had so much going on in their lives that they forgot to make the music sound good.

5. DEAD HOMIEZ
The beat is decent, not much to write your mother about, but if you're discussing hip hop with your mother anyway, I'm sure the conversation will eventually turn to the lyrics, which are among Cube's best writings ever. "How strong can you be, when you see your pops crying?", indeed.

6. JD'S GAFFILIN', PT. 2
Do you recall the comment I made about the original "JD's Gaffilin'" skit from the first album? The statement still holds true now, except that this skit isn't fucking funny at all.

7. I GOTTA SAY WHAT UP!!
On this outro, O'Shea goes out of his way to thank every single rapper in existence that isn't anybody in N.W.A. The last bit at the end is pretty much Cube's final statement on his past. (At least, it was, until N.W.A. dissed Cube on their next album, but we'll get to that when we get to that.) I think it's pretty funny that DJ Muggs uses pretty much this exact same beat for his "Puppet Master", which featured B-Real and...Dr. Dre. Think about that! Or not, I don't mind.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Overall, I was really disappointed with Kill At Will, but, then again, it's basically made up of outtakes from the AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted sessions (I'm really surprised that he didn't just put "The Bomb" on this EP, instead of tacking it on as the last song in his debut). "Dead Homiez" is good, and "Jackin' For Beats" is a hip hop classic for a gaggle of reasons, but as a total seven-track package, you can't shake the feeling that these leftovers were served simply to make the record label some extra money, not unlike how labels re-release year-old albums today with quote-unquote "special features". Speaking of which...

BUY OR BURN? Luckily, I don't have to make this decision for you. The entire EP was tacked on to the recent reissue of AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, an album I already told you two to buy anyway, so I suppose a lot of you will end up with this disc by default. I wouldn't go out of my way to grab it separately, though.

BEST TRACKS: "Dead Homiez", "Jackin' For Beats"

-Max

RELATED POSTS:
Other Ice Cube write-ups can be found by clicking on the magical link.

2 comments:

  1. I would describe this as an EP mixtape. Except "JD' gaffilin' pt.2", which is a filler, all the other tracks are not bad.

    Especialy the outro is interessting and sounds not like West Coast anymore.

    "Dead homies" still sounds good today and I think it's the only Cube song on which his voice sounds steady and adultlike...

    -Kay-

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  2. Definitely one of my favorites from 1991. "The Product" was all over the place but still hit hard. Looking forward to Death Certificate or the gangsta album that P-Funk built (however you look at it).

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