Bonus Post #5

That last review sucked. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. There was just no reason for that album to even exist in the first place. So for today's bonus, let's look to somebody else within the Gang Starr Foundation... or, at least, someone who was once a part of the inner circle before everything went sideways.

Jeru the Damaja - Still Rising (October 16, 2007)

Now here’s a thread I haven’t followed in many moons. Kendrick Jeru Davis, who performs under the pseudonym “Jeru the Damaja”, is best known as a former member of the Gang Starr Foundation, albeit one who managed to capitalize on his first two DJ Premier-produced efforts by actually having some good bars. My understanding is that he was first discovered by the late Guru, and then brought into the fold to spit some cameo verses on Gang Starr albums (not unlike Lil Dap from Group Home), and the response to those tracks led to his still-highly-acclaimed debut, The Sun Rises In The East, which contained the absolute monster singles “Come Clean”, “You Can’t Stop The Prophet”, and “D. Original”, all of which garnered the man a significant underground fanbase. After the release of his sophomore effort, Wrath of the Math, Jeru left the Foundation behind: although he denies it today, rumor has it that something transpired between Preemo and himself that led to a physical altercation. Still, that left the Damaja with two full albums produced by a dude many consider to be the finest our chosen genre has ever offered, which isn’t bad.

His career began to spiral after abandoning his old friends and partners. Jeru’s third effort, Heroz4Hire, dropped in 1999 to middling reviews and general complaints about the project’s sound: Jeru’s production on that project proved that he learned absolutely nothing from Preemo. (The album was also credited as “featuring Miz Marvel”, a female emcee who only popped up on four songs (less than half of the project) and then promptly vanished from the game.) A follow-up, 2003’s Divine Design, fared even less well, although Jeru at least walked away from the boards, assigning production duties to Ed Dantez and Sabor. Unlike his first three efforts, Divine Design features zero guest appearances, as his longtime friend Afu-Ra had stood by the Gang Starr Foundation after the breakup, and the aforementioned Miz Marvel was nowhere to be found.

Jeru the Damaja’s fifth album, Still Rising (a title that implies some semblance of a connection with The Sun Rises In The East), took four years for him to release, as his general fanbase had reduced in size with each new album. Sabor’s all over the production on this one, too, although a handful of tracks were given to other folks, including our host himself. It follows the Divine Design template of featuring zero guest rappers, allowing Jeru the space to unload his thoughts without the need to temper his words or beliefs. Sales figures aren’t readily available for Still Rising, but Jeru has yet to release a proper full-length follow-up to this project, which likely is all you need to know about that.

Still Rising is a project I started to write about well before my two-year hiatus, but unlike some of my other older posts, I hadn’t bothered to finish it prior to the break. Instead of starting over from scratch, though, I opted to pick up where I left off, at least according to my notes. See if you can tell where the time jump occurs!

1. INTRO

In which our host delivers a message in the hopes of making Still Rising seem more important than it truly is. Not surprising, but not necessary, either.

2. THE CRACK

Admittedly, I haven’t bothered to listen to Heroz4Hire and Divine Design since I first write about them, and I’ve forgotten everything about those two Preemo-less projects, so right now I’m subconsciously comparing Still Rising to The Sun Rises In The East and Wrath of the Math. And, curiously, our host seems to be doing just fine, thanks. “The Crack” is a fitting reintroduction to Jeru the Damaja, and this one-verse wonder sounds like our host had never taken any time off from the microphone or the pen: he’s just as confident in his own abilities and self as ever. Sabor’s instrumental is on the simpler side, but weirdly moving at the same time, and Jeru sounds perfect over it. His boasts-n-bullshit still run on preacher-slash-teacher mode, but “The Crack” was still rather fucking enjoyable.

3. THE PROPHET

Divine Design included a song introducing a titular character named “Rasta Powers” that allegedly resided in the same universe, but “The Prophet” is Jeru playing the ace hidden up his sleeve, as he finally resurrects the persona from his first two projects to continue his ongoing war against Mr. Ignorance. Sabor’s beat doesn’t, and can’t stack up against DJ Premier and Pete Rock’s work in the series, but it still sounded good to me, and our host was clearly inspired enough to reboot the franchise. Jeru sounds completely within his element, doing battle with the personification of Seduction on “The Prophet”. It says a lot about Jeru that the song ends with our hero being brought to the edge of defeat by a woman: I mean, the Damaja seems to have a tiny bit of an issue with misogyny. (The man who once recorded a song called “Da Bichez”? Never!) But if you try not to read too much into that ending, you may find yourself liking this one. He’s two for two now on Still Rising, which is so weird to me.

4. GHETTO

Popular song title today. Anyway. “Ghetto” represents the first misstep of the evening (and it’ll be far from the last), as Jeru’s street raps, delivered with what seems like an ironic remove from the events described as though our host has never interacted with another human being in his lifetime, are performed over a Sabor instrumental that literally sounds like someone opening and closing the squeaking back gate, but with drums programmed underneath. I guess everyone finds their muse in different ways. “Ghetto” is generic as hell, and is part of the reason why I had erased the memory of Still Rising from my memory, it’s that bad. So, yeah.

5. MURDERA

I fear Still Rising may have blown its load before the foreplay had even really begun, as the previous track was awful, and “Murdera” fares no better. Jeru the Damaja is in full-on “listen to me, I have Something To Say About Society” mode, and his TED Talk is set over a crappy Sabor beat that, admittedly, sounds different than everything else on the project thus far, so at least the dude has range. Which doesn’t matter when the end result is this shitty and boring. I’m sorry.

6. QUANTUM LEAP

Gimmicky to a fault, and the repetition is frustrating, as our host speaks the phrase, “If I could go back in time.  I’d rewrite my history line for line / I would’ve never done my first crime” over three thousand and nine times, it seems. But the sentiment is genuine, I feel. Jeru goes the wishful fantasy route, as we all have, wondering what he would do if he had the ability to change the past (hence the title, “Quantum Leap”, although, sadly, neither the show nor Scott Bakula earn a mention during the song itself). He hits the usual points, resurrecting beloved and important figures while hoping for a quicker death for others (Christopher Columbus certainly is deserving of the treatment he receives here), and, of course, he wishes hip hop’s landscape were altered, but the part that stood out to me was how not only does he want the late Guru to be still with us, he expresses a desire to work alongside DJ Premier and the other members of the Gang Starr Foundation again. There’s still time to make that happen if you really want it, Jeru. “Quantum Leap” has an annoying instrumental, but you won’t pay much attention to it regardless, so.

7. HISTORY 101

If the rest of Jeru’s back catalog feels like it has a preacher-slash-professorial spin, then “History 101” is our host diving in full-stop, down to the tweed blazer with elbow patches sewn on. Jeru presents the listeners with an abridged history of slavery in the world, and you had better believe that motherfucker Christopher Columbus gets in on the action here, too. Sabor’s instrumental does the bare minimum here, which is fine, as Jeru’s lesson is and should be the focus anyway, and our host’s matter-of-fact recitation of dates, historical figures, and really fucking terrible events (delivered under the pretense of “how are you going to know where’s you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve come from?”, set up at the very end of “Quantum Leap”) caps off with his realization that giving us all the info “would take too long”, but then lets the Latinx audience know that their ethnic background likely has more to it than they may have believed. Not the way I had expected this one to end, to be honest. Jeru is no-bullshit here, rattling off these facts as though there will be a quiz later, and for all I know, Jeru will probably be forwarding one to everyone that hears this track, so be on the lookout for a strange e-mail to appear in your junk folder any day now.

8. HOW ILL

The thing about the last two tracks is that they read decently on paper, and our host makes some interesting points, but as songs, they falter. “How Ill” is a return to the actual rapping that you’ve all ostensibly come here to see, and it also fails, but for a different reason: Jeru the Damaja’s boasts-n-bullshit aren’t nearly as braggadocios to warrant this type of track, He certainly talks a lot of shit about how he’s so ill that he’s capable of ridiculous things, ranging from the mundane (such as writing the next Harry Potter novel at J.K. Rowling’s behest) to eye-rolling (as he goes to the idiot rapper well by saying, “have every lesbian chick begging for dick”… nope, sorry, that’s not how it works) to head-scratching (at one point he brags about hanging out with Osama bin Laden? The fuck?). Jeru’s obviously just playing around with all of this shit, but while he may be having a laugh, the rest of us are still stuck with a crappy song. The Sabor instrumental is also too self-serving for the material presented. I really didn’t care for this shit.

9. WILL GROW (INTERLUDE)

…

10. DIRTY BOMB

I don’t know exactly what’s behind our host’s incessant need to recycle bars from his own classic Preemo-produced songs in his latter-day work (on “Dirty Bomb”, lines from “Come Clean” are smushed together to form the “hook”), but it always results in the listener wandering away to listen to his older, much better projects instead of giving what’s directly in front of them a chance. Sadly, those samples are the only memorable piece of this self-produced lyrical Ambien. The promise made during the first two songs on here has certainly been voided by now.

11. NY

Jeru the Damaja hails from Brooklyn (or, more accurately, East New York), and as is the custom of every rapper in history, he is legally required to provide listeners with at least one song devoted to the subject of his home base. Showkase’s beat is okay, but a bit too flashy and bombastic for some of the bleaker shit our host describes, and Jeru’s rhymes are dumbed down a bit too much, but you could do much worse. I wouldn’t call “NY” a “good” song, though. Life is short.

12. JUS BUGGIN’

Rappers sure do love pitching their voices comically high in order to craft alternate personas, don’t they? Not that our host does that exactly on here: for all intents and purposes, he’s still Jeru the Damaja here. Related: don’t bother listening to Jeru’s piss-poor G-Child impression on “Jus Buggin’”: if one needs to hear our host alter his vocals, there’s an entire series of songs based around his Prophet character you can hear instead.

13. AIRPLAY

I feel that, if you’re listening to Jeru the Damaja’s fifth album along with me, then you already know what you’re getting into. Our host doesn’t have the most engaging voice or flow, but because he always thinks of himself as the smartest man in the room, you’ll be forced to listen to his rants, observations, and theories. So “Airplay” is no different. The joke, if Jeru even has an actual sense of humor, is that this track would never receive radio airplay because nobody wants to hear Jeru speak the truth about society. Ha ha, very funny, never heard that done before.

14. KICK ROCKS

An entire song made up of apologies from Jeru to various people, all of which sound insincere as shit. “Kick Rocks”, which our host invites the listener to do if you choose to not accept any of these apologies, is the musical equivalent of telling someone, “I’m sorry that you feel that way,” as Jeru doesn’t claim any responsibility for his role in any of these messes. Which, fine, okay, Jeri is a cocky bastard, we shouldn’t have expected anything less from him, etc. But then why record the song? Why did I have the bowl, Bart?

15. HOLD TIGHT

So much meh over here.

16. STREETS (FEAT. CAMILE VELASCO)

The finale of Still Rising is the longest song of the evening, but all that means is that there’s even more bland, indifferent music to sit through here. I suppose Jeru felt he needed the extra space for his extended metaphor, in which he likens the titular “Streets” to a female companion that demands loyalty, even though she constantly leads our host and his friends into trouble. As far as this type of song goes, it isn’t bad, and our host makes some cogent points. As entertainment value goes, however, “Streets” has zero replay value: once you figure out the game the Damaja is playing, the illusion shatters, and while the song is well-written, it’s also just dull. Sabor’s smoother instrumental doesn’t exactly help matters, either. And lo, there was another Jeru the Damaja project I never have to listen to again.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Still Rising starts off promisingly: for a split second, I actually believed that Jeru the Damaja could potentially have a career rebirth outside of DJ Premier’s domain. But then I remembered how the rest of the album sounded, and I settled in for a turbulence-filled flight. Jeru’s pen game isn’t bad, but the guy seems to only run on one mode, and that mode doesn’t transfer well to the vast majority of the instrumentals he’s compiled for Still Rising. There are some interesting concepts presented on this album, and I appreciated his resurrection of The Prophet, but overall Still Rising is akin to a dying gasp, followed by a death rattle, from an artist who had been abandoned by our chosen genre, which, interestingly, seems to happen to pretty much every single person who leaves Preemo’s side. So let’s float the rumor that DJ Premier is the Harvey Weinstein of hip hop, but just in the “destroying the careers of artists who dare defy him” way, not the “raping every actress and female producer that walks in his path” manner. I fear for what could happen to the career of Royce da 5'9" if PRhyme ever disbands.

BUY OR BURN? A burn is sufficient, although avoidance is even easier.

BEST TRACKS: “The Prophet”; “The Crack”; only the lyrics to “History 101” and “Quantum Leap”

-Max

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The Jeru the Damaja storyline has some additional entries, which can be found by clicking here.