All-Star In The New York Times

[The Purple Champ]

I LOVE when the NY Times wries about rappers.


Waiting (and Waiting) for a Big Rap Moment


By KELEFA SANNEH
Published: February 4, 2008
NASHVILLE — He calls himself All $tar, and he has what most rappers dream of: a devoted fan base, a strong regional reputation and a big-time record deal. His major-label debut, “Street Ball” (Cash Money/Universal), is one of the year’s most eagerly anticipated Southern hip-hop albums.


 A darker mood: The Nashville rapper All $tar, whose latest release, “$tarlito’s Way II,” sounds more like a concept album than a mixtape.
But all that was equally true last year. And in 2006. And in 2005 too. All $tar, who just turned 23, has been Nashville’s next big hip-hop thing for so long that the title has stopped seeming like a compliment. These days if you ask him about “Street Ball,” he can still muster some bravado.

“I plan on my debut album being a smash,” he said. But a few seconds later he acknowledged the obvious: “All of that is wishful thinking.”

While waiting for his moment, All $tar has gone back underground, performing at nightclubs and releasing a series of mixtapes designed to keep the anticipation high and the bills paid. He is a lovable rapper, equipped with a witty, conversational flow. But his latest release, “$tarlito’s Way II” (Grind Hard/Loyalty), is something else altogether: an astonishing double CD that sounds less like a stop-gap compilation and more like a concept album.

He spends the first disc building himself up. (You may be pleased to hear that he is “focused on the cake like a chef at a wedding.”) And he spends the second disc picking himself apart, debating himself, wondering if he should quit. (One song offers a half-serious diagnosis; it’s called “Rap Music Ruined My Life.”) These tracks — nearly three dozen of them — follow a familiar but effective arc. With his first breath he recalls his first breath: “Dec. 15, ’84, a star was born.” And near the end, he enumerates his last wishes: “Give my guns to the goons, give my game to the lame/Let my music spread like legs till they remember my name.” Certainly these CDs should make him much harder to forget.

On Friday night All $tar could be found in the lobby of a Nashville hotel, tall but inconspicuous despite the glittering Cash Money pendant around his neck. He gamely answered questions about his bittersweet career, growing more voluble as he got deeper into the details. For starters there’s the unusual deadline “$tarlito’s Way II” had to meet. “My ultimate goal was to get these CDs out by my birthday,” he said. “As a birthday present to myself.”

All $tar was born Jermaine Shute, and he grew up mainly in East Nashville. In “Life Story,” the riveting six-minute track that begins Disc 1, he describes his surroundings: “Mama was doing hair, Daddy was smoking rocks.” All $tar’s teenage years, abridged: drug-dealing, basketball, college (Tennessee State University), hip-hop.

Nashville isn’t known as a hip-hop hotbed, and the city’s country-music economy doesn’t much help. (The country festival formerly known as Fan Fair? “The only thing that meant in my neighborhood was extra traffic,” he said.)

Just as Young Buck, Nashville’s best-known rapper, found success by joining 50 Cent’s G Unit, All $tar built his career by forging out-of-town connections. He joined forces with the Memphis rapper Yo Gotti, who in turn got him a deal with the New Orleans label Cash Money (now based in Miami), which has a distribution and marketing deal with the Universal Motown Records Group.

A lot of the excitement surrounding All $tar can be traced to “Grey Goose,” a thunderous 2005 single based on a rowdy chant: “I’m on that Grey Goose (Ay!)/Do I know you? (No!)” The song became All $tar’s calling card, and in his brash verses, you can hear the excitement of a rookie rapper glimpsing success: “They call me Cashville’s prince, Cash Money’s newest young’un/Wipe my sweat off with a 20, blow my nose with a hundred.” On a remix, Cash Money’s flagship rapper, Lil Wayne, saluted the upstart: “Give him a check and a gun, Baby, welcome to the label.”

But then came nothing. Since the conventional wisdom is that hip-hop albums need to start strong, it’s not uncommon for rappers to wait months or years while labels try to figure out the right single, the right track selection, the right marketing plan. And as rappers from Beanie Sigel to Clipse to All $tar’s friend Yo Gotti have discovered, great mixtapes don’t always translate into hit albums.

So “Street Ball” still doesn’t have a release date. And years later “Grey Goose” remains All $tar’s biggest hit, although he now sees it as a mixed blessing. “I was having a hard time, for a second, being so closely associated with alcohol,” he said. Now he seems to be having second thoughts about lots of things.

It was 2006 when he released “$tarlito’s Way: I Am Not Your Friend,” a sharp mixtape that showed off his clever approach to talking tough. (A threat to shoot someone in the head becomes an architectural renovation project: “We make stadiums out of domes.”) His playful delivery made him sound more lighthearted than he felt: his best friend had recently been murdered. Those violent , seemingly exuberant tracks reflected a grim time.

By contrast “$tarlito’s Way II,” which was recorded in less tumultuous circumstances, sounds much darker. There are plenty of whimsical punch lines (“If you the Feds, man, I might as well be dead, man/Rubber bands don’t work for me — I wrap my dough in headbands”), and plenty of squelchy, slow-rolling electronic beats from the Nashville producers Fate Eastwood and Coop. But All $tar often seems puzzled by his own life: “Guess I saw too much and I knew even more/When Jordans mean that you’re rich, it means you’re used to being poor.”

He spends most of the second disc trying to figure out what went wrong. He asks himself why he ever signed that Cash Money contract, concluding, “I wanted the fame, plus I wanted the chain/Plus I wanted that check — you woulda done the same.” And during a bonus track, his misgivings find expression in a pithy quatrain:

Perfect vision — not hardly, can’t see right from wrong
I only see the light when I write my songs
But I only see the money when I write what’s wrong
So you only see me shine when the light’s not on.

Somehow this sounds even better coming from the same guy responsible for a (great) track called “Gangsta-est Swag of the Year.” On these two CDs bluster and self-consciousness fight to a draw.

Perhaps the most painful admission on “$tarlito’s Way II” is this one: “They ask me when my album dropping — I don’t have a clue.” And it’s hard to say whether this renegade project will help him or hurt him, especially since the hip-hop industry is collapsing. He says he doesn’t know, either. But at least now he knows what to say to fans and friends who ask when his album is coming out. “My honest response is, go to grindhardonline.com and get this one.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/arts/music/04star.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin