Stillmatic Review

Everybody remembers the fight, and the fight is only the second best thing here. Ether is a demolition, blunt and personal and clearly written by somebody who has been waiting to say all of it, and it did what diss records almost never do, which is change the standing of both men. But One Mic is the song that saves the career. It starts at a whisper and climbs to a scream across three verses on a single sparse loop, and the dynamic control is astonishing from a rapper who spent two records sounding like he was reading.

Rewind tells a murder story backwards, from the bullet leaving the body to the argument that started it, and it works as more than a stunt. Got Ur Self A Gun turns a television theme into snarling street rap. 2nd Childhood is quiet and sad and the closest he gets to the observational writing of his debut. The production is uneven, some of the soul samples are thin, and the party track pulled from later pressings was rightly pulled. None of that matters much. This is a man who had stopped being interesting deciding, in public, to be interesting again.