Slang Prostitution

Slowly crawling out of the hole he dug with 2001's The Yin and the Yang plus 2003's The Struggle, Cappadonna makes good with Slang Prostitution, a better yet still uneven effort that finally arrived in early 2009 after more than a year of delays. It's overstuffed at 19 tracks, and hard ballers like "Life's a Gamble" with Raekwon seem out of Capp's reach here, but when the off-kilter Wu-Tang rapper turns to mischief, women, or something breezy, he excels. The out of tune swaggering on "Walk with Me," the hazy nostalgia of "Stories," and the wonderfully spaced-out "Da Vorzon" all work splendidly, but it's the "biddy-biddy-bop" jazz of "Somebody's Got to Go" that towers over all with the lyrics bouncing all over G-Clef da Mad Komposa's almost-Us3 production. The redundant songs plus three chapters of the tedious spoken word piece "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down" keep this one off the top tier, but fans will recall the good ol' days when Capp explains how he's living the "Savage Life" with the throwback stinger "To animals/My words be the words of Christ." ~ David Jeffries