J-Zone: $ick Of Bein' Rich

In 2002, Pimps Don't Pay Taxes established rapper-producer J-Zone as one of independent rap's most exciting talents, a Pinto-driving, penny-pinching, frequently hilarious misanthrope with a Vinnie Barbarino swagger and production style that falls somewhere between early Prince Paul and Madlib. J-Zone's humor is raunchy and lowbrow, predicated largely on the hip-hop staples of sex and money, but his production sounds deceptively complex and sophisticated, crafting loopy narratives out of disparate and unlikely sources. In J-Zone's sonic universe, characters from black-and-white matinees serve as a makeshift Greek chorus, commenting on the action and providing bawdy punchlines. On Pimps Don't Pay Taxes, misogyny made up only one component (albeit a large one) of J-Zone's winning comic persona. On his latest album, the bigger but not better $ick Of Bein' Rich, sexism becomes an overriding obsession that continually threatens to derail the proceedings and spoil the fun. Like Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, $ick Of Bein' Rich feels sexist in a depressingly calculated way: It's as if J-Zone sat down beforehand with an insensitivity coach and plotted how to make the most offensive album imaginable. Self-indulgent and inconsistent in a way Pimps seldom was, the album finds J-Zone reaching outside his Old Maid Billionaire family to guests like J-Ro, King T, Masta Ace, Celph Titled, and Copywrite. J-Zone has widened his circle of guests, but he's narrowed his thematic obsessions to a monomaniacal degree. The hilarious J-Zone of old pops up only occasionally, as on brashly irreverent story-songs like "Ho Kung Fu," which spins his Lucy Liu obsession into a proudly regressive, culturally insensitive variation on Slick Rick's "Indian Girl (An Adult Story)." $ick Of Bein' Rich's highlights match Taxes' inspired anarchy, but they're stranded here amid a sea of time-wasting skits, songs that just don't work, and lyrics that too often confuse boorishness for wit. J-Zone remains one of rap's most inventive producers, but his latest marks a considerable regression.