Welcome Me Back Like Kotter

There is no greater moment in the history of Cribs then when Redman demonstrated how you had to rub two wires together to make is doorbell ring. Okay, that may be the only great moment in the history of the worthless series. But what I’m getting at is that in a genre where everyone acts and talks exactly the same Redman is the rare original. He’s always good for a classic verse whenever he shows up on someone else’s song (see Christina Aguilera’s Dirrty) or when he working with a super group like Def Squad. But he was at his best when he paired up with Method Man going back and forth on Blackout!

But that album was released eight years ago and it’s been six years since his last solo album. In the interim, he teamed up with Method Man in other mediums including movies (How High), on the television (Method and Red, yet another great show Fox axed hitting double digit number of episodes) and even were a featured tag team in the video game Def Jam: Vendetta. Finally Redman is back to doing what he does best, and I’m not talking about starting in Chucky slasher flick, no, I’m talking about his new album Red Gone Wild.

On the album, Reggie Noble continues to show his wry humor and love of similes. But the album suffers from being uneven at points with the runtime being way too long at almost an hour and fifteen minutes. Not even the best rappers can fill an album that long with all bangers. The unevenness can also be attributive to the number of different producers that show up, fourteen to be exact, on the twenty different tracks. Surprisingly both Timbaland and his current feud partner Scott Storch both show up behind the boards. Needless to say Timbaland’s track Put it Down was the winner of the two songs on the album.

Had Redman trimmed the fat down to about the regulation fifty minutes, he would have had a pretty decent album. He is at his best when surrounds himself with friends most notably on the best track Walk in Gutta with his Def Squad buddies Erick Sermon and Keith Murray and legend Biz Markie providing the hook. But I wonder if The Funk Doc was at all upset that Keith had the best line on the track, “We get drunk and tongue kiss (expletive deleted) like Flavor Flav”. Similarly Snoop Dogg’s line “I’m the black Jack Tripper” on Merry Jane. But that doesn’t mean Red doesn’t deliver classic lines elsewhere on the album, but you will have to check out the album to hear them.

Song to Download - Walk in Gutta

Red Gone Wild gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.