Written by: Andrew Kirkpatrick
When a beatmaker steps up to either fully produce another artist’s album or put together a compilation LP of their own, you can usually expect them to bring their A-game. It should stand to reason, after all, that the talents who so often thanklessly salvage some level of listenability from songs that would otherwise be ruined by lesser MCs would be ready to operate at the peak of their powers when the spotlight is finally turned toward them. This year alone has seen quite a few hip-hop records that display what a great beatmaker can do when they hold nothing back. DJ Mustard has struck gold twice both with the huge number of catchy instrumentals he has featured on YG’s My Krazy Life and on his own mixtape, 10 Summers. On his excellent collaboration with Freddie Gibbs, Pinata, Madlib crafted some of his best-ever beats, and by extent, pushed the promising Gangsta Gibbs toward realizing his potential as one of the new school’s best MCs. Travi$ Scott’s latest, Days Before Rodeo, pushed the envelope for hulking trap rap instrumentals, adding a progressive and experimental edge while not losing sight of the genre’s visceral power. And The Alchemist’s collaborative LP with Evidence, Step Brothers, proves yet again why he’s one of the best to ever pick up an MPC.
Unfortunately, Boston’s Statik Selektah, typically a purveyor of top-notch boom-bap beats, plays it way too safe on his latest compilation LP to stand out in such a landmark year for hip-hop production. The instrumentals on What Goes Around aren’t bad by any means, but they’re incredibly conventional, and most fall far below his high standards. The title track that kicks the LP off is a pretty good indicator of just how uninspired the production on this record feels from front to back. The track features nothing in the way of build-up; the second you hit play the beat just pops up out of nowhere. A “We Major”-esque horn sample that I feel like I’ve heard in a thousand rap instrumentals at this point immediately comes blaring through as Statik Selektah embarks on a corny (and thankfully brief) monologue about the perils of falling off in the rap game, all before a mountain of drums, vocal samples, and strings are heaped lazily on all the noise with no regard for dynamics. If there exists a less compelling opening to a rap album, I’d like to know about it.
The next track, “Carry On” is similarly grating. It features some nice drums and a smooth sax melody, but an incredibly obnoxious whistle sample appears every few bars to mercilessly dig into your eardrum. Why Statik – who’s never been known for experimenting with noisy, abrasive sounds – would layer this particular sample into the mix of an otherwise nicely produced instrumental is a confounding mystery.
Luckily, none of the other instrumentals are outright unlikable, but most are still uninteresting. “All the Way (Pimp Hop)” leaves a soulful groove stranded, its riffs doomed to loop over and over without ever being taken in new, more interesting directions. The beats carrying songs like “Alarm Clock” and “Down Like This,” meanwhile, are easy to forget about just as soon as they fade into the next track. Given that Statik Selektah has made plenty of great beats in the past – with his LP from just last year, Extended Play, being no exception – it’s disheartening to hear such a bland batch of instrumentals coming from him.
Luckily, the swath of MCs that show up to rap over these unimpressive beats do more than their part to keep the proceedings engaging. The roster runs the gamut from underground East Coast spitters, to new-school indie prodigies, to big-name veterans, and almost all of them bring quality contributions.
As can be expected from a Statik Selektah release, plenty of East Coast spitters show up to demonstrate their mastery of the boom-bap cyphers their hip-hop subculture revolves around. Talib Kweli comes through with an uncharacteristically aggressive verse on “The Thrill Is Back,” while Black Thought, responsible for the best verse on Statik’s previous LP, tops himself once again with a stellar, two-minute verse on “The Imperial.” Simply put, braggodocious bars don’t get more ambitious than “Yo, who’s your top 5? / Jay, Biggie, Pac, Nas? / I ain’t tryna hear another name if it’s not mine.” At the top of the same song, Action Bronson jumps into his verse with a name-dropping brag of his own – though one that’s as absurd as you’d expect from Bronsolino: “Yo, it’s the rap Scott Disick.”
Though East Coast vets and newcomers fill out most of the album’s guest list, What Goes Around still features a markedly more diverse roster than Statik’s previous compilations. Midwest spitters like Jon Connor and Royce da 5’9″ contribute verses, along with a surprising number of West Coast MCs, like B-Real, Snoop Dogg, Crooked I, Freddie Gibbs, and Ab-Soul. The latter two in particular deliver truly great verses. With “Carry On,” Freddie Gibbs continues his post-Pinata victory lap, spitting a mind-boggling verse with the speed, momentum, and force of someone going downhill on a bike with no brakes. And on “Alarm Clock,” Ab-Soul does what he does best by serving up some strange, free-associative philosophizing – “crucifix, positive, addition it’s all the same / given that gettin’ head is cool, but what is it if you don’t use your brain / that’s one plane, negative subtraction but still a balance / if dyslexic, then play this shit backwards.” Wise words… I think.
As great as these verses are, however, it’s ultimately disappointing that they go above and beyond Statik Selektah’s efforts on his own record. Beatmakers may not often be at the center of attention in hip-hop culture, but when their ambitions go into overdrive, they can steal the show in the most impressive of ways. A song from J Dilla’s posthumous record, The Shining, might be the ultimate example of a producer pushing the envelope way farther than their collaborators could hope to. That track, “So Far To Go,” succeeded in bringing the incredible D’Angelo out of hiding. But it didn’t even matter. The song’s beat is so good that it’s hard to even care that it marked a brief reappearance of one of modern R&B and neo-soul’s absolute best voices. That, simply put, is production at its most awe-inspiring. And though it’d be unrealistic to expect Statik (or any producer) to lay claim to such an achievement, anything nearing that level of ambition would’ve made What Goes Around a much more compelling record.
