My Gut Reaction: Prodigy - The Bumpy Johnson Album (October 2, 2012)

This week I’m running a series of posts in honor of the late Albert Johnson, better known in the hip hop community as the rapper Prodigy. These reviews will close out both his and his group Mobb Deep’s respective catalogs, so if you’ve been following this blog, you likely know what projects will be popping up this week. Enjoy, and leave your comments below!

Shortly after his release from prison on a gun possession charge, Prodigy released a free project, The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP, through the Complex website. It consisted of seven tracks with production from the likes of Sid Roams and his old friend The Alchemist, all working to help the man deliver the thoughts and inquiries he had stored in his mind during his bid. Titled after his newly-acquired nickname borrowed from the mob boss and bookie Bumpy Johnson, the EP found Cellblock P no longer behind bars, but still struggling to get his thoughts across. It was a transitional project, one designed to help him ease back into the world of a working artist, and it was intended as a one-and-done situation, allowing Prodigy the tools he needed to move on with his career.

So then can someone please explain to me why The Bumpy Johnson Album was released a year and a half later?

Also, why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me about this project until a few years ago?

The Bumpy Johnson Album is a curious case, in that seven of its twelve tracks were all previously released on the EP mentioned above. In theory, this means that it shouldn’t have taken Prodigy very long to fill out this project for its official release (as a digital-only exclusive), and yet it took him a year and a fucking half. It does act as an expanded version of that EP, however, as our host enlisted the same producers to provide new beats that could coexist with the original songs.

For his part, Prodigy used the five new slots made available on The Bumpy Johnson Album to write songs that reflected his mindstate whilst locked up, but as told from the perspective of a man who already went through hell and survived, and was, as such, untouchable. Yeah, there’s a lot of braggadocio on here, which should come as no shock. He also changed the cover art, which now reflects the man sitting down with a gun pointed at the lens, just in case you suddenly believed he was all about positivity and not still in tune with the gritty street life he so often rapped about.

The Bumpy Johnson Album is one of those projects that folks knew very little about, unless that was just me again, in which case, you all suck. I couldn’t locate any sales figures for this project, but considering that over half of its songs were given away for free in 2011, it’s safe to assume that nobody actually bought this thing. The real question is: should they have?

1. CHANGE

As mentioned above, Prodigy included every song off of The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP on The Bumpy Johnson Album, but placed them in a different order, shuffling tracks and tossing them up in the air at will, playing them wherever they landed, so a new song ultimately opens this project. The Sid Roams instrumental for “Change” is simple, sure, but effectively moody, driving our host to unleash three calculated verses (and a crappy hook, but hey, we get the songs we deserve, not the songs we want) dedicated to just how over your bullshit he happens to be. He even manages to sneak in the word “blandishment”, which, even though it always reminds me of this, is fucking hilarious. Our host’s bars come across as a truncated TED talk, as he helpfully explains why he’s so much more real than you are, dunn, but over the given beat, his words hold much more weight than they might have otherwise. Why, some might even claim that I enjoyed this one.

2. THE ONE AND ONLY

The album opener on The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP gets bumped to second position here, with Cellblock P excising nearly a full minute from the run time (the introduction originally included an extended sound bite from the film Hoodlum) in order to hurry up and get to the actual music, please. It still isn’t very good, though. The Alchemist’s instrumental, pilfered from his own work on Twin Gambino’s “Smart N----z”, which was already two years old when the EP was released, hasn’t grown into a sleeper hit in the ensuing years, and our host’s “slow, apathetic flow” (as I originally referred to it as) has somehow become even more boring during what is technically a re-listen on my part. (I hadn’t listened to The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP since writing my review.) It’s shit like “The One and Only” that makes me wonder why Prodigy would even bother revisiting this era of his career.

3. TOLD Y’ALL

Nonsensically, but unsurprisingly, in that way where nothing ever surprises me anymore because on a long enough timeline everyone bad becomes good, everyone good turns evil, hats gets worn on your feet, and hamburgers eat people, the bonus track off of The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP (why an EP included a bonus track in the first place is an entirely different mystery you two can debate in the comments if you must) has become the third song on The Bumpy Johnson Album, with its intro (another Hoodlum sound bite) excised, but exactly the same otherwise. (I would argue that eliminating the Hoodlum dialogue from every track that originally included it would negate Prodigy’s adopted Bumpy Johnson alias, since Laurence Fishburne plays that role in said movie, but maybe United Artists had more of an issue with Cellblock P’s creativity since the EP was a free download and The Bumpy Johnson Album was put up for sale.) The Sid Roams beat remains blandly motivational, and the deployment of the Jay-Z vocal sample is still funny to me, but “Told Y’all” still underwhelms to this day.

4. GO OFF

The second song from the EP reappears here in a fascinatingly edited form: not only is the movie sample chopped off (it ran for one minute and twenty-five seconds, so you won’t miss it one bit), our host also chose to delete his ad-libs from the beginning and end of the track, which makes for a leaner listening experience, if a rather impersonal one. Still, “Go Off” was one of the better offerings on The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP, and it’s still engaging today, even if a lot of that feeling comes from me pretending that Prodigy’s Biz Markie- and The Notorious B.I.G.-aping opening bar sounds like he’s actually saying, “I’m laughing with my mom.” Not sure why I didn’t mention this fact in my original review, but during the second verse where our host uses the calm Sid Roams instrumental as a vehicle to deliver a list of his favorite rappers, Prodigy clearly name-drops Hova, which, given their history, um, huh. So Cellblock P was at least able to bury that one hatchet in his lifetime.

5. RECIPE FOR MURDER

Finally, another new song. Producer S.C., who has sold beats for both Prodigy and Mobb Deep projects in the past, provides an instrumental for “Recipe for Murder” that sounds like it cost all of two dollars and seven box tops, and by gum, I really liked it. Look, sometimes you’re craving a steak, and sometimes you’re craving a steak quesadilla from Taco Bell. The chorus is corny as shit, as our host’s recitation of the song title is pitched both high and low, all of it sounding overly precious, but Prodigy’s two verses are very good, as he revives his cold, calculated killer persona throughout this Biggie “Ten Crack Commandments” riff that is both compelling and, at times, pretty fucking funny. P sounds like he gives a god damn, which is definitely worth something. S.C.’s beat brings a late 1980's vibe to the proceedings, which you two already know I’m partial to. If it wasn’t for the fucking stupid hook, “Recipe for Murder” would rate up there with the best Prodigy solo efforts, no lie.

6. HITMAN

Two new songs in a row? How blessed we all must feel right now. Anywho, producer King Benny, whose credits seem to only include random tracks for various Mobb Deep affiliate acts and not a great number of them at that, had a beat on The Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson EP, so our host was kind enough to allow him some space on The Bumpy Johnson Album. Which was a mistake, as the very first thing you hear on “Hitman” are some sampled Cellblock P vocals from his vastly superior “Keep It Thoro”, which remained in the forefront of my mind even as our host attempted to both spit and sing (!) his way through a song on which he struggled to float the concept of a “Hitman” as a type of rapper assassin, a role he felt he fulfilled at least at the time of recording. The sung vocals are amusing just because of the pedigree, but the track itself is a waste of time. Just go listen to “Keep It Thoro” already.

7. MEDICINE MAN

The last new song for a while also features the lone new Alchemist instrumental of the evening, and it’s a sinister little bugger, a soundtrack for when you’ve accidentally murdered your roommate while high on LSD and need to chop up the body in order to dispose of it without drawing too much attention to yourself. Or for when you’re high while walking through a haunted house. You’re fucked up either way. Alan’s frequent collaborator Cellblock P certainly feels the tension, using the space to deliver three street-oriented verses that come equipped with allusions to both “Quiet Storm” and “Shook Ones Pt. II”, and I know, I get it, the man has quite the storied catalog to draw inspiration from, but it shouldn’t be necessary for him to bring that shit up for no real reason. Not my favorite Cellchemist track by a long shot, but it wasn’t bad, and unless I’m misremembering the next song, it’ll end up being Al’s finest contribution to tonight’s cause.

8. FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY

My previous write-up implies that I really dug The Chemist’s “For One Night Only” instrumental once upon a time, but it doesn’t give me any of those feels this time: it sounds fine, but “Medicine Man” is the clear winner. It doesn’t help that our host’s verses, while competent, are fairly lame, as he spends the entirety of the song trying to convince an anonymous woman to sleep with him before she goes back to her normal life and normal significant other. The subject matter shouldn’t be beneath him: as a writer, nothing is off-limits. But Cellblock P certainly sounds like he believes himself to be above it all, the disconnect and aloofness resulting in a hollow listening experience today. He also says the line, “I’m back like a spine,” so there’s that. This was just a very long-winded way of me saying, “This song doesn’t hold up over time.”

9. TWILIGHT

“For One Night Order” is possibly the least-altered of the EP’s songs  ̶  only a brief sound bite was removed from its intro. But the Sid Roams-produced “Twilight” features the most egregious bit of editing of the entire project: a guest verse from Havoc has been deleted entirely. Yes, you read that correctly: Prodigy’s Mobb Deep partner-in-rhyme has been removed from this narrative, possibly because of the internal beef that had been brewing between them at the time of The Bumpy Johnson Album’s release. (The timeline syncs up, at least.) On top of that, apparently removing an entire guest verse and the introductory film dialogue left what remained of “Twilight” to be far too short, so our host shifts the overly-wordy chorus into first position, now opening the song instead of just getting straight into it. The Sid Roams beat is still okay-ish, but Cellblock P isn’t convincing with his apathetic street shit, and without Hav’s contrasting vocals, “Twilight” becomes a fucking slog. I listened to the original version just now for comparison purposes, and Havoc’s performance is clearly the better of the two, as he provides a break from the Prodigy monotony, which is a sentence I never thought I would ever need to write. Sigh.

10. BLACK DEVIL

It’s frustrating that “Black Devil”, Prodigy’s call for racial unity in the face of adversity, is even more potent today than it was in either 2011 or 2012. I mean, we suddenly have Nazis running these streets unashamed again. The fuck happened? I recall liking our host’s message on “Black Devil” the first time around, even though he takes the long way around before revealing his theme, and it holds up about the same for me today. The Sid Roams beat is a bit punchier than I remembered, but Cellblock P’s bars are still the main attraction, and that nickname I keep using is most applicable on here as the man spends part of the track detailing his experience behind bars. He even removed the mixtape-esque drop from the end of the track for the retail version, which was awfully nice of him.

11. STRONGER

This one was still pretty bad, though. Producer King Benny manipulates the Nina Simone vocal sample to relay a message she wasn’t actively trying to push on her own “Four Women”, and Cellblock P’s verses are generic platitudes, threats, and hyperbole delivered in an unaffected manner that doesn’t read as “calculated”, just “sleepy.” Ugh. My favorite thing about “Stronger” is, obviously, my own sentence from my previous review: “… the song trips over itself multiple times, the clumsy bastard.” It made me laugh, at least. Man, 2011 Max was a funny motherfucker. I wonder what happened to him.

12. NO ONE CAN DO IT LIKE THIS

The final song of the evening is also the last new track of the lot, the Sid Roams-produced “No One Can Do It Like This.” You’ll immediately notice how its upbeat-by-comparison sound in no way meshes with the rest of the disjointed The Bumpy Johnson Album, which, at the very least, had a consistent, if middling, serious street vibe throughout. This track runs for less than two minutes and serves as a glorified outro, and after Prodigy spits his lone verse, the sample than fades out a bit, creating a rather natural end to the album… which is then obliterated by our host’s incessant need to step back into the scene to provide an unnecessary chorus as a coda. What Cellblock P didn’t seem to grasp back then is that we, the listener, never asked to hear anyone do it like this. Ah well.

THE LAST WORD: Although this is far from essential listening, The Bumpy Johnson Album is an entertaining-enough distraction, especially if you dug the EP it spawned from. Prodigy’s verses on both the old and the new joints showcase a man who had fallen from grace (in this instance, the upper echelon of rap) and was actively engaged in proving to the doubters that he deserved a second chance. Not every song works, and some of the tracks on here are pretty terrible when you consider the source, but when you stumble upon something that you end up enjoying, you’re that much more grateful that at least that exists. “Medicine Man” stood out to me from the new offerings, while “Black Devil” sounded much more potent this time around than it did eight years ago when I first wrote about it. There isn’t really a need for you two to go out of your way to find this one, but if you absolutely must have everything Prodigy touched in your collection, well, good fucking luck with that hoarder mentality, and also, I get it. This could, and should, have been worse than it really is.

-Max

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