Album: The Lex Diamond Story
Release Date: December 16, 2003
Producers: Various
Review: It may have been four years since Immobilarity, but The Lex Diamond Story made the wait worth it for fans of Raekwon the Chef. It's an hour of good beats and great rhymes by an emcee who rarely (if ever) falters in front of the mic.
Lex Diamond starts off with an intro skit. Hang in there; we've got five more before the album ends. Luckily "Pit Bull Fights" hits the ground running with the energy and ferocity needed to get the album started right. It's the kind of call to arms that Ghostface would emulate two years later on "Shakey Dog," the opener for FishScale. A nine-second skit doesn't really detract from the album, separating "Pit Bull Fights" from "King of Kings," featuring a smooth verse by Havoc from Mobb Deep and untouchable rhymes by Raekwon. The songs go three-for-three with "Missing Watch," which has an admittedly silly premise (Raekwon in a club looking for his watch) but offers Ghostface's first guest spot and a great beat of electric bass and funky guitars over a drumbeat with the drumstick rocking the edge of the snare.
Mercury produces "All Over Again," which utilizes the post-Forever Wu sound of pitch-raised soul vocals over half-clean, half-chunky beats. Raekwon looks back on life as he talks about talking with his mother on the phone: "Heard my moms crying at night, we rappin' on the phone / 'I love you; never meant to stress you out, do you wrong / I'm workin', gonna move you from a block to a home.'" Like "All I Got is You Pt. 2" from Immobilarity and the recently-discussed "Grits" on RZA's Birth of a Prince, it's one of those worthwhile moments that cuts through all of hip-hop's ego and story to bring a sincere look at someone's personal life. Of course it was Rae's partner-in-crime Ghostface who started up the vulnerable side of the group on 1996's Ironman (which features the original "All I Got is You"), but even here, seven years later, it's a trend I'm happy to see continue.
"Smith Bros." opens with a skit between Raekwon and a (fake) journalist, but it's telling of where his career was at the time in that he gets irritated at the reporter's question about writing "another Cuban Linx." The song then kicks your door in and sprays bullets across the house for four minutes with a phat bass-driven beat. Rae's best words so far are in the second verse, bouncing back and forth between two rhymes for the majority:
"Map the laws, runnin' cards, playin' bars
Mask the coke in the cars, twist the ganz, mad, crackin' cigars
Smokin' through Queens, bitches stealin' Guess jeans
Get the scope on our stars, little did we know, we follow they dreams
Now we get around in live limousines, flash stacks in cuisines
Combat get to smackin' the fiends, just max for a minute and lean
All the shit for the moment, slick omens, my opponents would scheme."
So the cards/bars/cars/cigars rhyme is tight, then it sounds like it's done when Rae sets in on the Queens/jeans bit, but he brings one more ("stars") before getting back to the second rhyme (dreams/limousines/cuisines/fiends/lean/scheme). Not to mention the soft "a" that appears in almost every line (map, mask, mad, crackin', flash stacks, combat, smackin', max), tossing the whole sound up in the air like an Inspectah Deck verse. I think it's exactly what Chef's fans - myself included - hope for when we buy one of his albums and tear it out the cellophane.
"Pa-Blow Escablow" is the kind of no-nonsense track that helps shake up the flow of the album, only marred by an odd-sounding vinyl pop loop throughout the song. "Musketeers of Pig Alley," though, is all smiles. It shares its name with the 1912 DW Griffith film, arguably the first gangster picture in film history. Masta Killa and Inspectah Deck guest and each bring fire for their verses. "They started jammin' in the park / Just after dark / Two turntables and the DJ scratchin' / Words seem to have an attraction when they rhymin'," raps MK, followed by Deck's upbeat "Feel what I'm droppin', I spit the ill doctrine / Spy him deep in the Killa Hill poppin'."
"Ice Cream Pt. 2" can't quite touch its namesake in classic Wu quality but it does find the original's light-hearted summer, girl-chasing spirit. On first listen it's easy to see why he named it how he did, but that does set a pretty high standard to surpass. Things wind down afterwards, with the good-but-not-great "Planet of the Apes" and "Wyld in da Club," ending on a stronger note with "Once Upon a Time" featuring lovely singing by long-time Wu associate Tekitha.
Legacy: The Lex Diamond Story is proof positive that a Wu general can bounce back strong after one less-than-amazing album. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is one of the best rap albums I've ever heard, and Immobilarity is decent but clearly the least impressive of Raekwon's oeuvre. Lex Diamond is a real comeback, with some amazing tracks, a lot of great ones and only a couple lukewarm songs. It would be another six years before Cuban Linx Pt. 2 hit stores, but it's also one of his best, nearly matching his debut. In the meantime, Raekwon proved what he had to prove here and on subsequent guest spots - that as usual, The Chef is cooking up some marvelous shit.
Recommended Tracks: Pit Bull Fights, Smith Bros., Musketeers of Pig Alley.
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