Review Summary: Life is hard – wouldn’t want you to be me, but life is beautiful – it’s great to be me.
MF Grimm retired in 2007 after the release of his previous LP
The Hunt for the Gingerbread Man stating “when I have nothing left to offer to the game, it’s time to step aside to make room for the young ones.” An odd thing to hear from the man who has one of hip hop’s most dramatic life stories. Having grown up as a childhood actor on Sesame Street, Grimm experienced countless tragedies at an early age which eventually culminated with him being shot seven times and becoming paralyzed from the waist down. Since that time he has created some of the most enlightened, mature and optimistic verses in the history of hip hop, and eventually in 2010, Grimm believed he was once again capable of making substantial art in the form of
You Only Live Twice: The Audio Graphic Novel .
The album includes a booklet of thirteen comic-book style sketches by graphic artist Jim Mahfood. Each of the sketches corresponds with a different track. Although
You Only Live Twice it inconsistent and hurt by a number of skip-able tracks, the two highlight tracks
Return to Eden and
Angel Without Wings are essentially flawless and take MF Grimm’s discography as far as its ever gone.
Return to Eden features an impeccable sampling of Daffy Duck losing his mind to riches. These skits are among the best ever done in hip hop; they create the perfect cartoon-Persian atmosphere for a song that uses Middle Eastern instruments to create a fitting background for a track discussing selling your soul for wealth. MF stands for “mad flows”, meaning Grimm can flow with virtually any track, and this song is no exception. It is simply a masterpiece.
On
Angel Without Wings Grimm tells the story of his life (arguably better conveyed through poetry than any rapper in history has ever done in one track) and uses another one of his incredibly unique flows to instill drama and passion into his lyrics over a simple, but catchy, piano instrumental. His use of pausing in the middle of his raps, using only a half bar to give extra emphasis to his most dramatic lyrics is heart gripping:
Five [years old] already I make my own money
Theme of show [Sesame street], days are sunny
Growing up knowing I was a talented baby
Growing up knowing I was a talented baby
My move to Elm Street was not funny
Freddy Kruger place was shady
(pause)… … … tragedy changed me.
No sleep, nightmares go crazy
Turn into Reaper and nothing can faze me.
This track takes you through his entire life and ends on an extremely optimistic note by likening his girlfriend to an angel who came from heaven to save him from hell on earth.
Angel Without Wings is probably the best single demonstration to show what MF Grimm is about as a rapper and a person, and is typical of the way he somehow turns reminiscing over tragedies into reasons to be optimistic – always done with various unique flows.
The main problem with this album is the inconsistent production, the tracks mostly ride the bass but are outweighed by instrumentals that are sometimes obnoxiously repetitive.
The Legend of the Golden Warrior contains a 210 second long skit and
Medicine features an annoying girl moaning as a beat. These two songs are still decent overall, but they also hurt the first half of the album by taking away from the masterpiece
Return to Eden and excellent tracks like
You Only Live Twice.
The question coming into this album on everyone’s mind, including MF Grimm, was “does Grimm still have enough talent to make noteworthy music?” In the end you come to the realization that he absolutely does, he was just distracted by an average comic book artist and let down by an inconsistent producer named Twiz the Beat Pro (who produced every track on the album). Quite frankly the comic book sketches included with the album are worse than worthless: they actually take away imagination from Grimm’s raps by having such simplistic imagery representing them. For example, for the track
Medicine a song that relates women to pain killers, the art work is simply a woman’s face filled in with pain killers. The production on the album is sometimes botched, but when the beats hit Grimm does more than his part and creates what can only be described as Godly music for an album featuring the theme of what would happen if a rapper were truly a Prophet.
https://soundcloud.com/twiz-the-beat-pro/mf-grimm-return-to-eden-prod
