Houston, Texas. This town has been very busy in the last year or so. Busy producing some of the hottest, most successful mainstream rappers to recently hit the scene. Notable Houston based artists include
Paul Wall,
Chamillionaire,
Slim Thug, and Mike Jones. Now then, the million dollar question is really quite simple:
Who Mike Jones?
If I was going to dismiss with all eloquence, I’d basically just say that he’s a suck rapper. Unfortunately, I have to look at this from as an unbiased point of view as I can possibly muster. Now, I must admit that the only works I’ve heard from Mr. Jones are contained on his latest studio release, 2005’s
Who Is Mike Jones?. I can say this much with an honest heart, though: if his previous works are anything like this tripe, then I won’t feel any remorse whatsoever for my berating of him.
Who Is Mike Jones? is really just absolutely terrible. I can’t really believe how such a ridiculously bad album reached certified two times platinum status in just about a year. I mean, sure, most mainstream hip-hop chart toppers aren’t all that impressive, but at least their music is
decent. It’s actually hard to explain in words exactly how bad
Who Is Mike Jones? really is. I’ve compiled a brief list of adjectives that aptly sum up the entire album: abhorrent, appalling, atrocious, awful, beastly, dangerous, desperate, dire, disastrous, disturbing, dread, dreaded, dreadful, extreme, fearful, frightful, ghastly, gruesome, harrowing, hateful, hideous, horrendous, horrid, horrifying, inconvenient, loathsome, monstrous, obnoxious, odious, offensive, petrifying, poor, repulsive, revolting, rotten, serious, severe, shocking, unfortunate, unnerving, unpleasant, unwelcome, vile. Anyone of the aforementioned words would do quite well if included in a sentence alongside
Who Is Mike Jones?.
Now, just what makes this album so bad? Well, Mike Jones first and foremost, has one of the biggest egos in music history. That’s really saying something. I say this due to that fact that his name appears no less than three times in the lyrics sheet of every single song on
Who Is Mike Jones?. I get the freakin’ idea about who you are, so shut up, alright Mike Jones? Colloquialisms states that “Vanity, thy name is teenage girl.” However, after listening to
Who Is Mike Jones?, you’ll wonder why it isn’t “Vanity, thy name is Mike Jones.” Actually, Mike Jones, you could use that for your next album title, Mike Jones; did I type your name (Mike Jones) enough in this run-on sentence, Mike Jones? Right, since the use of his name seems to make up a good percentage of the lyrics sheet how do the other words stack up? Well, they don’t. They actually are the poetic incarnation of a house of cards in a category five hurricane. Mike Jones has absolutely no talent as a lyricist. His rhymes (I hesitate to deign these jokes as rhymes) are inane, sloppy, and just plain stupid.
None of this is helped by Mike Jones’ laughably pathetic delivery. His rapping style is just incredibly poor. He’s annoying, inconsistent, and just plain irritating to listen to. You honestly can’t enjoy
Who Is Mike Jones? simply because of the fact that Mike Jones is just horrible at what he does. I mean, on top of that, there’s just no attitude. Hip-hop should have plenty of attitude and ambition. You can hear neither in Mike Jones’ voice. He could essentially be rapping the words “Me, Myself, and Mike Jones” over and over again, and this album would retain roughly the same level of quality. Actually, no, that’s slightly inaccurate.
Who Is Mike Jones? would actually improve if it was remixed with those as the only lyrics. I would suggest this to Mr. Jones, but he already has a “screwed and chopped” version of the album out, and the world doesn’t need any other version of this mess. That and the fact that
Who Is Mike Jones? would still suck, due to the fact that every third lyric on every song would feature Mike Jones’ name (currently, it’s something like [guesstimate] 1:5).
Oh yeah, as if things couldn’t get much worse, we haven’t even hit the worst part of the record. And what would that be? It’s what I consider to be the life-blood of a good album: rhythm and flow; meaning, the melody, the beat, the general feel. Well, it compliments the vocal style and lyric composition perfectly. Yes, dear reader, that’s right: on
Who Is Mike Jones, we’ve reached a holy trinity of suckage. The beats and melodies are just atrocious. Mike Jones just doesn’t have the talent to mesh well with anything. Not only are his songs peppered with soporific musical compositions and irksome samplings, none of it works together in any semblance of a coherent fashion.
Even the singles are terrible. “Back Then” and “Still Tippin’” represent the pinnacle of all of the problems with modern mainstream rap. Hell, the fact that an album that contains these songs can even sell if one of the music industry in general’s biggest problems. Both songs are equally pitiable. The tracks feature Mike Jones’ signature sloppy, repetitive, pull-your-hair-out-in-frustration feel. There really isn’t much improvement on the rest of the album. “Got It Sewed Up,” “Turning Lane,” “Laws Patrolling,” “Cuttin’,” and well, a lot of other songs, start off with Jones screeching out “Who Mike Jones?” That’s essentially the sign of a sure-fire flop. However, if I had to choose an upside to
Who Is Mike Jones?, I’d say it would probably be “Scandalous Hoes,” While this song isn’t really very good, it’s still a head or two above its track listing peers. “Scandalous Hoes” is especially nice due to the fact that you don’t here “Who Mike Jones?” until roughly the middle of the track.
I honestly have to say, I rarely come across an album that I genuinely dislike.
Who Is Mike Jones? is a freak occurrence, because I don’t just genuinely dislike it: I hate it. It’s simply a horrible, horrible album. I usually like to compare its contents to other chart-topping rap albums. The results are generally surprising:
Who Is Mike Jones? improves the sound of nearly every other low-class piece of trash out there. I eventually started comparing it to albums of other genres, and I must admit I owe Mike Jones for something: he made me genuinely dislike quite a few albums, on quite a broad spectrum. I’m afraid to compare
Who Is Mike Jones? to any other albums that I actually hate, for fear that my head will explode. Now, why the rating? Why not just a little lower? Well, for one, because of the whole aforementioned appreciation of trash thing. For another, due to the fact that “Scandalous Hoes” is a decent enough song. Still, I’d be happy if I never had to hear the names “Mike” or “Jones” put together ever again.
