By Emmett Robinson Smith
“Tryna fuck the world,
but my dick won’t fit,” Big K.R.I.T. snarls on “King of the South,” a track
from his recent masterpiece Cadillactica.
It’s a deceptively clever line: On surface level, it’s a ridiculous boast, but
it also sums up his position on the rap spectrum right now. K.R.I.T. is doing
everything he can to achieve greater acknowledgement in hip-hop, but nobody’s
ready to hear it.
The
rap game blew its load last year. Major artists such as Drake, Eminem and Kanye
West released solo albums in 2013. Smaller-scale artists Chance the Rapper, A$AP
Rocky, Tyler, the Creator, and many more dropped albums. It seemed as though
2014 would be sparse for hip-hop.
That’s not true. Although this year’s rap output was
nowhere near as large as 2013, Big K.R.I.T.’s Cadillactica is going criminally underappreciated as music
critics submit their year-end “Best Albums of 2014” lists. While it’s hard to
compare hip-hop with other genres, the ambition and
consistency of Cadillactica speaks
for itself as an album of the year contender.
K.R.I.T.’s finest asset is his capacity to echo his influences
and simultaneously sound unlike anyone but himself, thanks to the chameleonic
arsenal of moods, tones and styles in his flow. On the introspective, Lupe
Fiasco-esque “Soul Food,” K.R.I.T. uses food as a metaphor for the
disintegration of family values and relationships: “Some get bruised and
battered / thrown away half-eaten as if their seeds never mattered.” “King of
the South” compares to some of the most successful braggadocio rap tracks in
recent memory – think Kendrick Lamar’s “Control” verse, or Drake’s “0 to 100.”
K.R.I.T. raps his ass off on this “King of the South;” indeed, he runs circles
around most MCs. But by the end of the last verse, his exasperation with his
inability to gain commercial and critical success becomes evident: “Fuck ‘em,
fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em,” he vents. On “Third Eye,” K.R.I.T. channels
his inner Big Boi circa “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” as he fantasizes about
“picket fences and chillin, playin’ instruments” with a girl he sees for the
first time across the room. Anyone who has the guts to emulate OutKast in this
day and age deserves to turn heads, especially in light of the Atlanta duo’s
recent deification via their larger-than-life reunion tour this year.
Indeed, the production is acutely Southern. Live-sounding
brass instrumentation and female background choruses are layered over a bed of
deep, throbbing bass and kick. That’s not to say, though, that Cadillactica’s production adheres
strictly to Southern-style formulas. It follows the sound perfected on
OutKast’s landmark 1998 album Aquemini,
but with a distinctly futuristic twist. For example, on “Life,” the second
track, K.R.I.T., who produced most of the album himself, uses epic synth chord
hits and an operatic vocal chorus to convey the song’s space-age, intergalactic
subject matter.
What is probably holding Big K.R.I.T. back from
widespread fame is his artistic scope: he’s an album-maker in a market
where rappers are gaining success primarily from individual songs. Drake was one of the
biggest names in hip-hop this year, and he didn’t even release an album – he
released singles. With Cadillactica, there’s
no easily identifiable potential radio single that stands above the rest of the
songs. It’s not a collection of songs; it’s an album. So what’s an artist like
K.R.I.T. to do? Give in to the requirements of commercial success by releasing
radio-friendlier singles, or stay on his current plateau of popularity by being
an album-maker in the truest sense of the word? In this case, K.R.I.T.’s genius
is his worst enemy.
It looks like he’s sticking to his guns: “What’s good for
hip-hop may not be good for my soul / So I keep flexin’, wreckin’, for the
people that respect it / Check it, fuck a ‘Control’,” he growls on the album’s
penultimate track. Big K.R.I.T. is unflinching, original, and, most of all,
honest. He’s created something special, and one can only hope that the rest of
the world catches up to him as he zooms further into Cadillactica.