RSSBut that doesn't stop a lot of twentysomething hot flashes frommaking a career out of the the latest youth fad--and the dopestsubgenre since punk. Checking in with albums number three are theclipped, quick Eric B. & Rakim (Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em,on MCA) and the poppish girl group Salt-n-Pepa (Blacks' Magic,on Next Plateau). The former relies too predictably on the JamesBrown beats that got the duo their major-label advance; the latteraugments spunky girl talk with the Afrocentric seriousness now demandedby rap fans of all races. Salt-n-Pepa deserve better (checkNegroWit' an Ego,Independent,Let's Talk About Sex),but the hard fact is that neither album has the commercial legsof a career move. So let's hope neither act goes into hiding.
"Don't call it a comeback! I been here for years!" shouts L.L. CoolJ on the title track of hisfourth album,Mama SaidKnock You Out (Def Jam). Upset because 1989'sWalkingwith a Panthernever cracked double platinum, he's enlisteddemon sampler-mixmaster Melle Mel in what's sure to stand (Run-D.M.C.,this means you) as the most powerful and unreconstructed rap of1990. Cool J isn't down with moralizing. He sticks his car stereoin your ear and drinks a 40 while he's at it; he makes the fatherof one of the women he's fucking sound exactly like Mike Tyson;he lets KRS-One stop the violence. I don't know whether he'll returnto his multiplatinum ways. But this is one rap dinosaur who deservesmajor respect.
Playboy, Aug. 1990
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