Too $hort: Gettin’ It (Album Quantity Ten) Album Evaluation

The band’s fusion of Ant Banks’ sampling methods and knob-turning sorcery with stay instrumentation that put improvisatory spins on non secular funk odysseys of the previous—from George Clinton and Bootsy Collins to Kool and the Gang and the Ohio Gamers—fueled Too $hort’s five-year bender. It sparked his sharpest and most granular storytelling, and it was enjoyable as hell, too, this deep pocket of fashion and sound that by no means bent over backward for a crossover hit. All of it led as much as Gettin’ It, a grand, reflective finale the place $hort grapples together with his rap recreation mortality and legacy—typically thoughtfully, different occasions recklessly—whereas retaining the raunchiness and sub-bass sound of mobb music intact.

To strengthen the grizzled, weathered aura, Too $hort loosely billed Gettin’ It as a “retirement” album, one of many first of its variety in hip-hop. After all, like Grasp P’s MP Da Final Don, or Jay-Z’s The Black Album, it turned out to be extra of a dramatic hiatus. He doesn’t even make it via the entire album earlier than definitive statements on the intro like “We gonna’ kick it like this on the final album” flip to hedges by the penultimate observe: “This may be the final album I make y’all.”

It does really feel like the tip of an period, although. By 1993, $hort had settled into his new residence in Atlanta—on the album he says it’s due to violence, at the moment he claims it was as a result of Freaknik was so lit—and also you sense him second-guessing whether or not he’s misplaced that reference to Oakland. On “That’s Why,” over a cool bass lick and hypnotic synths, Too $hort reminds the youthful era of his Bay Space bona fides, which incorporates having “sixteen hos/Suckin’ ten toes” and a warning to newer rappers attempting to exchange him, particularly the duo Luniz: “If you was within the fourth grade I had a document deal/You bought one hit document now you ballin’/You make one faux album and also you’ll be fallin’.” He flashes one of many coolest components about getting older in rap: extra room to self-mythologize.

That’s true of “Survivin’ the Sport,” too, the place, in between a number of political statements, $hort sounds just like the seasoned cowboy in a Western reflecting on the fruitful days earlier than the railroads had been constructed. His nostalgia makes him sound like he simply turned 60, not 30, which I assume is smart in hip-hop, however he owns it: “I’m 30 years previous, and much from completed,” he spits, silky as ever, as soon as once more forgetting that he’s considering retirement.

Even his verses about getting ass have that one-last-job really feel to them. He treats another soiled mack on “Unhealthy Methods” as if it’s Derek Jeter’s ultimate at-bat. He admits to desirous to get his ass licked on “Nasty Rhymes,” the kind of confession {that a} hypermasculine rapper would solely make if he thought he was peacing out. And in addition “Nasty Rhymes” lastly reckons with Too $hort’s rampant and long-running misogyny. Form of.