You Can't See Me [PA] * by John Cena

The dimensions of hip-hop artists vary so much that blaming someone or writing someone off for being different is as impractical as stereotyping hip hop as a bunch of noise. Punchliners/comedy rap, emotional, complex, simplistically mindless mainstreamisms are all categorized and there are many emcees who aren't even limited by those. While I think Cena is an entertaining rapper who doles out punches in the right limit, he's also a wrestler which may keep attention away from extracting his rap talents onto records. Do I know anything about wrestling? No, although many who have reviewed this album have compared his two talents. So that will not be the spotlight or focus because his music is the only thing that is important within artistic critique.

Skill and potential are two different things. Potential is giving your fans and supporters confidence that you're able to improve and become someone who lives through his music and displays talent. Skill is complete achievement and knowing what you've overcome, being confident in what you have yet to face in rhyme. Maybe it's a bit too complicated and poetic, but I'm not trying to make it confusing by saying the truth differently than others may. Evolving as an artist takes maturity and patience, and I think Cena has potential but still needs to impact us to have skill. Something always helps, either the concept, lyrics (and the beat can have a nice percentage of it) but there were problems with the disc that were noticeable in many ways. The beats are mainly what helps mainstream records sell, and although Cena's goal may not be to live with the urbanized colonies of rich gangstas or even become commercial at all, the beats are obscure and distorted. Now, some of them can be pretty exhilarating and original as well (yeah, I like Don't F*** With Us, which has synthesizers tripping over one another and some of the most head-nodding braggadocio I've heard lately) but they can also experiment, cramming and shoving computerized instrumental attacks into songs that coulda been alright otherwise. Flow Easy is boring and the crunches of dramatic keyboard are undetermined to bring out anything exciting.

The morose and sharp If It All Ended Tomorrow is excellent though. Your subconscious has probably already judged the song by it's title, but whether or not it makes an effect on the musical part of your mind is a decision you have to make. The dark pianos splash onto the melody with a depth, drums producing a rhythm that isn't too catchy but is more bouncy than the rest of the instrumental. Cena & Trademarc run towards their destiny in a strategy that takes them throughout their life in a pattern of rhyming that leads through introspection and reminding others that no one is immortal. Just Another Day is another intelligent SWOOSH into a man's passionate life that leaves him down and heartbroken regardless of the length, width, consistency and heart of his dreams. Cena looks into the calluses of life that disable you from stretching out and reaching to that goal, that skill you've had since childhood that people encouraged and told you was different. His rhymes are a little bit average sometimes ("Bus seats hurt my a**" is a demonstration) but I love that hopeful beat that sparks a flame in rap's atmosphere that relies on backlash and beef.

Keep Frontin' and We Didn't Want You To Know are the tracks that threaten all of the people who Cena & Trademarc have an obvious problem with. The first has a mischeivious vocal sample that seems dangerous against the mandatory sirens and drums and the intentional stutters that clog the verses and hook. And "Didn't Want You" has a bleeping vengeance vibe that creates a verse trade-off between Trademarc & Cena during the last verse. They are both interesting but create instant comparisons to songs which have more mean intentions and are better known for their subject matter. Chain Gang Is The Click is even darker, even though it doesn't focus as much on destruction and peril to select people, just a grimy track which represents themselves. However this is part of my indecisiveness about the album, the concepts and construction are the same as many others but there's really nothing wrong with their style. Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer is seen several times in a dictionary as dimwitted, smart, and lucky? If you see these guys in an encyclopediac source or even in a short biography, will there be anything instantly noticeable? Good and bad are squished into the same portion of the album sometimes.

Before I'm finished, I still gotta intake a few things. There are the party tracks, Make It Loud with an awesome graze of synthesizers and lyrics that aren't dumbed down, incredible, or sitting relaxed between both. But besides most of what I just mentioned, the liveliness which undertakes the party tracks and the depth which anchors the tracks which have to do with prospects of death, the future, and possible careers; we're gonna have to define this as average. Right Now is plain as a kiss-n-hug sorta musical can be, pianos that sound like Mariah Carey would be happy to sing on them and uninventive lyrics that are more processed than imaginative. Honestly, this album isn't giving me any inspiration to write any more, I feel that these two need to revive themselves and reduce their unoriginality to partake in the games that the pros play. It's the unsteadiness of the album that proves that slipping from a goal is just as bad as completely falling from it.

Great Music To Play While: not having anything else to say

My entry into my Indecisive W/O which involves being indecisive over an album. See the link for rules.

snik1