RA the Rugged Man- Legends Never Die

This, according to Spotify, is my favorite album of the last decade, and RA the Rugged Man my favorite artist, and that is strange, because I myself would not say that. What it was was an album that I played more or less on a loop for a year that had two or three songs I return to regularly (“Definition of a Rap Flow” remains in regular rotation).

I think the biggest reason I stopped listening to the album as a whole was that I realized a major flaw in Rugged Man’s style: he couldn’t stay on topic. In a song that’s just about how awesome you are, this sort of thing doesn’t really matter. Lyrics are treated like jokes with set ups and punch lines, but that doesn’t lend itself to having a coherent whole. But Rugged Man does shine using this style, in fact he’s one of the best (“I been a problem since my first birth date/ in the delivery room my d*** hit the ground and it caused an earthquake”). That’s all well and good, but when you have songs that are attempting to be vulnerable or topical, (“Media Midgets” and “Legends Never Die (Daddy’s Halo)”) that kind of disjointed delivery makes the entire song fall flat, leaving me with no emotional core with which to identify.

But maybe my reaction is just the result of over saturation. There was about a year where all I listened to was rap, called myself a “hip hop head.” Hip Hop gave me confidence and added a certain swagger to my step. I think that’s the reason I listened to it for so long: it gave me something I was lacking in my everyday life. Then, one day, I realized that rap wasn’t giving me what I needed anymore, all the beats that I’d been able to lose myself in were just numbing me. Every song sounded the same.

I’d still call myself a hip hop fan, but I’ve expanded my taste beyond just that genre. I don’t really seek out new hip hop to listen to, and that might be the big change. I’d rather return to those few songs and albums that have stood the test of time, whether that’s from nostalgia or from the inherent quality of the rhymes, I don’t know, but there is some quality that has kept them around in my mind for these past five years or so. It’s as if my music history is ancient sandstone where you can see the different eras preserved in layers of rock. Somewhere in the middle is a layer about foot wide that geologists say represent the “Hip Hop Era.” And whatever dinosaurs there were went extinct, leaving only traces to show they existed at all, and as to what allowed those traces to survive, no one is exactly sure.

3/5 If you like disses and braggadocio, parts of this are for you. Unfortunately that’s really all this album has to offer.