(Babygrande Records)
The freestyle. Many have tried it, few are good at it and most don't actually freestyle in the first place. It's a quickly diminishing art form, a combination of extemporaneous lyrics, a consistent flow and breath control.
The good artists can flawlessly keep their flow going while spitting entertaining metaphors and clever plays on words that keep the subject matter relevant. The bad ones don't freestyle at all-they dig into their mental archives of written material with the hopes that the audience doesn't recognize it.
Simply put, Supernatural is one of the good ones. The Lost Freestyle Files is his opportunity to show the world his off-the-cuff gifts while attempting to prove that he can hold down studio tracks as well. While this album should be considered successful on both counts, his success in the former overshadows his attempt at the latter, which is probably a good thing.
In \Get Ready To Rumble,"" Supernatural takes on highly respected emcee Juice and cooks him up a hot dish of service, rebutting every tight line that Juice had to offer. Juice got him good with ""Say you studied my style it makes me wonder buddy/ Cause you not good enough to even be my understudy."" But Supernatural comes right back with lines like ""Understudy? Yo, that's suicidal/ Fuck that shit/ Supernatural is your idol,"" and ""Yo, that was cool, you tried to diss me/ But I bought your wax and used it for a Frisbee.""
To give Juice a better chance of winning, the judges went ""8 Mile""-style and switched the order for the last round, making Supernatural go first and giving Juice the last laugh in the battle. Supernatural sliced him up anyway with the knockout punch being a dead-on imitation of the late Biggie.
""The Live Show"" is a 20-minute exhibition in off-the-dome rhyming, as Supernatural opens up a show for the Wu-Tang Clan. Supernatural shows off all his guns, as he proves that his vocal fluidity is evidence of his lightning quick thinking, not his rehearsed lyrics. First, he takes three words from the audience, ""fat,"" ""tical"" and ""Judge Ito,"" and makes a rhyme out of them. Then, he has the audience hold up random objects from their pockets and purses and incorporates them into his lyrics in real time.
As good as his freestyles are, Supernatural is not quite at the top of his game in the studio. The tracks of this sort on the album are solid, but not spectacular. Supernatural enlists a who's-who list of underground emcees including Chali 2NA of J5, Iriscience of Dilated Peoples and Wildchild of Lootpack to add some familiarity to his songs, but there just seems to be something missing. Maybe it's the fact that Supernatural's written rhymes sound just like his freestyles. He doesn't step up his game when given the chance to think out his rhymes and put them on paper.
Freestyle specialists are to studio rappers as street ballers are to NBA players. They are very gifted, but their talent typically doesn't equate to much actual success. If Supernatural can improve his studio presence, he may be able to buck this trend in the future. In the meantime though, pick up The Lost Freestyle Files and appreciate the talents of perhaps the best freestyle artist in hip-hop.
(Geffen)
The soundtrack to Rob Zombie's oft-delayed directorial debut, ""House of 1000 Corpses,"" is as quirky and strangely disturbing as would be expected from such an endeavor. Unfortunately, the album is horrifically marred by unnecessary filler, perhaps a consequence of the incessant postponement of the film and the doubt that it may ever be released. The album is overstocked with sound bites from the movie, which appear frequently and run long past their welcome.
Thankfully, the sound clips mostly stand alone as separate tracks, thus allowing for easy omission from the listening experience. Other material from the movie, namely the frighteningly redundant instrumental soundtrack, would only be of use as background for an adolescent Halloween party.
However, the CD does have a number of redeeming moments. The more standard Rob Zombie tracks are a continuation of the musical path the ghoulish rocker began on his two solo albums. With his work here the former Robert Cummings indulges his musical urges for rockabilly, country and even straight-up funk of course with the usual Zombie trademarks prevalent.
The greatest ironic duet in recent memory can be found on the track ""Brick House 2003,"" which features guest vocals from Lionel Ritchie. Unfortunately the re-heated classic's amusing quality is defeated by an unnecessary appearance by rapper Trina.
Finally, the most unsettling and peculiarly appealing aspect of the album is found in a number of antiquated tracks, in particular Helen Kane's ""I Wanna Be Loved By You,"" which is immediately followed by Zombie's ""Pussy Liquor."" A scarier combination would be difficult to fathom.
