Lean and Mean: The Philly Duo Lands Its Most Powerful Punch
Written: Jan 26 '07 (Updated Dec 26 '08)
Product Rating:
Pros: Paz is reinvigorated; Stoupe is unsurprisingly amazing; album contains some of JMT's most insightful songs
Cons: Most of those interludes could have been left out, though
The Bottom Line: It is the best album they have done so far - Jedi Mind Tricks' Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell is a terrific album in which everything is aligned
balogun's Full Review: Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell by Jedi Mind Tri...
The righteous thug must have really thought hard about the path he was taking. I mean, who wouldn’t? Wouldn’t you do so - as the rapper of a hip-hop duo - when multitudes of fans are lambasting you for “dumbing down” your lyrics while your partner is darn well on his way to the Hip-Hop Producer Hall of Fame? Who really wants to be the weak link in an otherwise strong team? No one does. Yet this is where Vinnie Paz found himself, in the doldrums of mediocrity. Visions of Gandhi and Legacy of Blood gained popularity – mainly for their beats. Paz may not have the gigantic clocks swinging from his neck a la Flavor Flav, but he clearly knew what time it was.
By listening to Jedi Mind Tricks’ fifth album, Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell, it is exhilaratingly obvious that Paz is bent on rectifying the lyrical mishaps of the previous two albums. Right after the thunderous classical blast of the “Intro”, Vinnie Paz unfurls a barrage of interlocking multi-syllabic rhymes over Stoupe’s bed of haunting mandolin strings that would make Kool G. Rap extremely proud:
Yo, roll the dro and spark, a bunch of animals like Noah's Ark A rapper so ill, my flow just stole Jehovah's heart My fist'll break a fuc&ing boulder in half When I was young, I'd smack a stick off of your shoulder and laugh I've chosen a path, spoke on my emotional past Spoke on everything from war to how the ocean is vast My flow is too fast, you can't contend with me there Or it's gonna be a massacre, Tiananmen Square - “Put ‘Em in the Grave”
The ill lyricist is back. More interlocking multi-syllables abound in the twelve-line delight of “A Blood Red Path”, the relatively light-hearted “Suicide”, the Shara Worden-assisted serenity of “When All Light Dies” and the basement grit feel of “Serenity of War”. And for once, he doesn’t get outshined by the guest rappers, be it the tag-teaming with Ill Bill in the splendid “Heavy Metal Kings”, joining with Sean Price once again in the opera singing-punctured grandeur of “Outlive the War” or bringing fellow Army of the Pharaohs members Reef the Lost Cauze and Chief Kamachi along for the ride in “Gutta Music”. Vinnie Paz sounds reinvigorated throughout the album; he polishes his flow with a return to more elaborate rhyme schemes, and ditching the repetition and most of the subject matter that plagued his lyrics in Visions of Gandhi and Legacy of Blood. Yeah, there are no more homophobic and anti-Christian rants (and let’s hope he keeps it that way for good). The violence is still in place, but it is rather complimentary than abrasive, in the plain hip-hop tradition of braggadocio. In Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell, Paz has never sounded better.
So thank goodness Stoupe doesn’t need to pick up most of the slack anymore. As a result, the beats in this album are not as sonically melodramatic as those in Visions of Gandhi and Legacy of Blood. He scales it down to beautiful blends of folk flutes, wood blocks, solemn strings, spirited pianos and Italian vocal samples. More than just a nod to Paz’s Italian heritage, the beats never overwhelm the lyrics; rather, they are worthy partners in fulfilling optimum auditory pleasure. For example, “Heavy Metal Kings” has that thundering drum-slapping effect and heightened army of strings that greatly compliment the ferocity of Paz’s and Ill Bill’s battling bars. And “Uncommon Valor: A Vietnam Story” is a gloomy affair, the haunting vocals in the background and the cave sound-like feel of the sparse instruments gratefully appropriate for lyrics concerning the ugliness of war. Apart from the “Intro”, he could have done without the interludes, though; there are five of them against eleven songs, which can make anyone think 80% of them could have been sacrificed for one or two more songs. But overall, as always, Stoupe does a great job with the production.
But of course, getting back to Paz, the acclaim for him goes beyond the brag numbers. Although there have been glimmers here and there in JMT’s previous albums, the introspection is full-blown this time around. In fact, Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell has the largest share of the most heartfelt lyrics Paz has ever penned and performed. “Shadow Business” is an impassioned attack on child labor and sweatshop factories, one of the elaborate reminders that slavery still exists. Oh, you thought it ended with the abolitionism movements of the 1800s? Paz begs to differ:
It's 1.6 million people locked in jail They the new slave labor force, trapped in hell They generate over a billion dollars worth of power And only getting paid twenty cents an hour They make clothes for McDonald's and for Applebee's And working forty-hour shifts in prison factories And while we sit around debating who the wack M.C.s They have to work when arthritic pain attack the knees
It is just as intense when the accounts are more personal. It is with “Razorblade Salvation” that the listener learns that Paz indeed pulled away from committing suicide after Legacy of Blood’s “Before the Great Collapse”: “Mommy, I'm sorry if my first letter made you cry/To be honest with you, I don't think that I want to die.” He could not bear to do that to his loved ones; he had seen the pain his father’s and grandmother’s passing had caused. No, he would rather “stick around a while” and “see if [he] can grow”. Meanwhile, though, he has a request to ask of his mother: “Keep that first letter I wrote you on the low.” No one could know that he had planned to commit this hopeless and somewhat selfish act. Add the sweet piano-punctured beat and the angelic vocals of Shara Worden, and you have an incredibly touching song. “Yeah, I've been alive longer then I expected to be,” he says in self-amazement in the equally striking “Black Winter Day”. Who knew the man formerly referred to himself as the “righteous thug” really had a soul?
However, “Uncommon Valor: A Vietnam Story” is possibly the most brilliant piece in the album. It has Paz using a first-person perspective to criticize the Vietnam War. It is obvious that, with him mentioning the apathy of the American president (“My mother always said, 'The president, he doesn't care'), the weak excuse used for justifying the war (“They say we trying to stop Chinese expansion/But I ain't seen no Chinese since we landed”), and the unnecessary and unwarranted killing in Asia (e.g. “For every enemy soldier, we killing six civilians”), he is drawing an unmistaken parallel to the latest war the United States is involved in – in Iraq. Not surprisingly, he had been a lot more direct throughout the whole album, most notably in “Outlive the War” where he likens George Bush and Dick Cheney’s actions to “genocide.” It is in “Uncommon Valor”, though, that his disdainful comments for the war – and by extension, the Bush administration – are more elaborate, yet powerfully compact at the same time.
As good as Paz’s verse is, though (and no offense to him, of course), it is guest rapper R.A. the Rugged Man that steals the show with his longer, more dexterous and more personal verse. It mainly scintillates because of R.A.’s considerably detailed account of his dad after his involvement in the Vietnam War; being infected with Agent Orange, it would adversely affect the health of two of his sons, of which one eventually died. In fact, in his verse, R.A. becomes his father – Staff Sergeant John A. Thorburn – as he recounts the misfortune that befalls him after the graphic details of the violence has been presented:
I must've died, then I woke up, surprised I'm alive I'm in a hospital bed, they rescued me, I survived I escaped the war, came back, but ain't escape Agent Orange Two of my kids born handicapped Spastic, quadriplegia, micro cephalic Cerebral palsy, cortical blindness, name it, they had it My son died, he ain't live, but I still try to think positive 'Cause in life, God take, God give
It is unsettling, yet amazingly insightful; and it just might be microcosmic of Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell in general. It is a darn great record, the best that Jedi Mind Tricks has ever done (yes, even better than Violent by Design). It is compact (50 minutes), and finally Paz and Stoupe are evenly matched after the disappointment of their two previous outings. And with the album being the most commercially successful of their releases – they broke through the Billboard Top 200 for the first time in their careers – Jedi Mind Tricks might eventually get the substantial mainstream exposure that has largely eluded them. “Y'all know that no one fuc&ing with us as a group!” Paz declares in “When All Light Dies”. In a sense, it is hard to argue with that.
TRACK LISTING:
1. Intro 2. Put ‘Em in the Grave 3. Suicide 4. Uncommon Valor: A Vietnam Story 5. A Blood Red Path 6. When All Light Dies 7. Serenity in Murder 8. Pariah Demise (Interlude) 9. Heavy Metal Kings 10. Shadow Business 11. Triumph and Agony (Interlude) 12. Razorblade Salvation 13. Outlive the War 14. Gutta Music 15. Temples of Ice 16. Black Winter Day
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