Grant JonesKnown amongst Hip-Hop culture as a pioneer of sorts, Detroit’s Esham is back with more of his dark, menacing raps. Or is he? For his twenty-second album(!), “Amuse Bouche” possesses some nasty-looking artwork, but continues his recent run of positive, more relatable rap. He found fame thirty years ago with a style that often went into graphic detail of violence and satanism, which, like the very horror franchises that influenced his career, he churned out on an annual basis. I imagine many readers may be aware of Esham’s infamy, but I haven’t listened to him for a while and this record was quite different from what I expected. It’s more varied than an album like 1993’s “KKKill the Fetus” and he’s not going to slap you to death with his dick as he did on 1989’s track “Knockin’ Em Dead” – a personal favorite, I can’t lie. But Esham has evolved – he’s not this one-note horrorcore rapper that I think he still gets labelled as. That’s generally been my underlying assumption, and his graphic artwork on “Amuse Bouche” (French for “amuses the mouth”) further feeds that stereotype, but this 23-minute effort is solid, if remarkably brief.
The barebones nature of “Back 2 Detroit” fits Esham’s flow, with a morbid plod accompanying the violent threats, but it’s not devoid of dubious rhymes:
“Once I grab the mic boy, I get hype
Your style’s like a shitty ass you’ll get wiped
I don’t need your girl cause she ain’t my type
So I hit her upside the head with my pipe
Plugging holes in ya broke bitch I don’t do dykes
Fuck a big mouth bass fish from Northern pikes
Catch me on stage with the chains and spikes
Backstage smoking on some Northern Lights
I might be high as a kite but you know I ain’t trippin’
Year 3000 I’ma still be dippin’
Cosmic slop is what I’m sippin’
Fucking with my cash great way to catch an ass whippin’
If you don’t wanna feel that terror so much you gotta stop looking in the mirror so much
Life is hard and I know it sucks it’s the end of the world and nobody gives a fuck”
This carefree attitude is better implemented on the summer-y collaboration “Transmission Fluid” with Stretch Money, where he keeps things simple, sets a scene and sounds like an entirely different person.
Production is similarly straightforward, and for some, it may be too low-budget, but considering Esham’s approach, the back-to-basics beats fit him, and are nothing new. Outlandish creativity can be found on “Death by Snu Snu”, a Natas reunion of sorts on “X-Men”, and he even sounds like Kurupt on “Erotic Poetry Pt. 2” as he urges his woman to get “physical” with him. In that sense, it’s a bit all over the place.
It wouldn’t be an Esham review if we didn’t compare him to the other emcee from Detroit who likes to shock people, but compared to Em’s album, I’d rather listen to this. Sure, it can be quaint, with little in the way of exceptional Hip-Hop music, and it has its own awkward dad-joke moments (the ODB impersonation on “Death by Snu Snu” for one), but the songs will age much better. Thirty years after his debut became rap’s equivalent of a video nasty, Esham shows there’s still some life left in his dead-eyed persona, particularly when he’s not playing the villain.