Posted on 09/12/2005

 

With a single guest-shot on Illmatic, rapper AZ announced himself as a full-fledged rhymer with a relentless flow and a vision to match. For those taking roll, the old AZ is accounted for on his fifth solo disc, A*W*O*L. In fact, he never left. But something’s missing… Hands down, AZ is one of the smoothest MCs to pick up a microphone in the last decade or so. Old NaS metaphors and A*W*O*L’s military imagery aside, AZ flows like a machine gun—from his very first bullet (“We were beginners in the hood as Five Percenters / But somethin’ must’ve got in us ‘cause all of us turned to sinners”) to his latest (“From floor level to the ice pebbles in the bezel / From peddle bikes to them Teterboro flight shuttles”), AZ spits with a precise, even cadence that seems both unstoppable and endless.

Given his automatic delivery, the keys to hot AZ records are solid, form-fitting production and songwriting that focuses his flow and topic matter. A*W*O*L has a good share of both, but not nearly enough of either.

AZ gets off to a mixed start with two Heatmakerz productions that feature the same soul-based sound that shaped his last effort, AZiatic. While the plodding beat on “So Sincere” weighs AZ down, the soaring samples on “Never Change” provide the backdrop for a vintage, inspirational AZ offering. The album’s first truly shining moment comes with “Can’t Stop”—an intense, multi-tracked cut featuring a truly elegant piano loop, a haunting vocal sample, and some experimentation on AZ’s part: the first verse is delivered almost entirely with “o” rhymes, the second with “in” rhymes, and the third with an “ane” and “ame” pattern. After the speed bump that is “Still Alive” (a hood anthem disguised as a club joint), AZ rolls into A*W*O*L’s highlight, the stripped-down, Fizzy Womack-produced “AZ’s Chillin’”. Over a banging drum beat and rhythmic chants of “Go Brooklyn”, AZ spits in slow-flow: “Used to hide the crack in the hotel ceilin’ / But that was way back when I was wholesale dealin’ / We made a killin’ off our little bitty villains / But really those little guns silly… still illin’/ Clip is chillin’ / Tips to the ceilin’ / Shot in ’96 Judas wounds still healin’ / That’s right he’s free-wheelin’ / Got it? Good!” A*W*O*L ends on another strong note as AZ calls in reinforcements from his aborted Final Call LP. Try to ignore the menacing, Buckwild-produced “Live Wire” or the bouncy, trash-talk fest “The Truth”.

Sandwiched between these high points, however, is an album that veers dramatically between two-star and five-star efforts. For every strong lyrical offering (“A*W*O*L”) and Primo-laced gem (“The Come Up”), there’s an excellent violin loop wasted on second-tier rappers (“Street Life”). And let’s not even mention his disastrous collaboration with Bounty Killer, “Envious,” where AZ obsesses about keeping his lip balm fresh in the middle of a gunfight.

Some of the inconsistency in A*W*O*L comes on the production side. After the chipmunk-soul drenched AZiatic, songs like “Bedtime Story” seem like leftovers. At the same time, however, the streakiness that plagues A*W*O*L (and other AZ projects) is a built-in hazard of AZ’s writing style. Compare the bonus cut “Magic Hour”, which pairs AZ and seldom seen NYC legend CL Smooth with one of A*W*O*’'s opening songs, “New York” featuring the Wu’s Raekwon and Ghostface. Between AZ, CL and Rae, we have three rappers who ruled New York radio in the early- to mid-90s with tight, emotionally subdued, rapid-fire verses that alternated unstably between recollections of the past, narrations of the present, and projections of the future. It seems as if every verse they ever spit was about everything and (as a consequence) nothing at once. In cases like this, individual tracks rise and fall on qualities that don’t have much to do with the skill of the MCs, just the style of presentation. Since every verse is just a slight variation on the equally dense and panoramic verse that came before, each track needs a subtle hook to make it stand-out. “Magic Hour” works because of its arrogance: it sounds like a summit of the United Hip Hop Nations when AZ’s “don of dons” with “self-esteem like Idi Amin” meets CL’s “Chairman of the Board, Black Leader, the Mecca Don, El Presidente”. Meanwhile, “New York” matches a solid AZ verse with a lackadaisical Rae and a lackluster Ghost, all over a generally lacking Emile beat.

Without a doubt, A*W*O*L is a stronger album than AZiatic. What’s more, its top songs can go against any other recent rap album’s top three. But as A*W*O*L closes it’s clear: for every armor-piercing bullet that hits its target, there’s more than a few that go astray. He’s won many battles, but to win the war, AZ’s going to need a keener sight.