Foxy Brown
Ill Na Na (Def Jam 533 684)

Foxy sure is foxy, although someone ought to have told her not to start off an album with almost 5 minutes of consecutive talking. Ill Na Na actually begins with "previews" of upcoming albums that have since come and gone, so it sort of plays like when you rent an old video and have to sit through all these old trailers.

With the additional irritation of the fact that CDs don't generally have trailers for other CDs. But then, I am totally upfront about the fact that I'm not the target audience for this disc. Even so, I'd be equally annoyed if, say, there were a trailer for a Looper album on a new Belle & Sebastian album.

Well, whatever. The music itself here is not all that memorable, though it's certainlly solid. Foxy's rapping is pretty good, though heavy on the sexin' and bank robbin' and all that. I would be willing to bet that Foxy Brown has never robbed a bank. You know what else I don't get? What is the hip-hop obsession with skits? Can you imagine a rock band putting skits on their album? They'd be the Bloodhound Gang. Where would that get us?

I always just picture these hip-hoppers in a studio, doing these skits in front of the microphone. Don't they get embarrassed? They're just pretending, you know? I don't know, I don't get that. It may well be that this is too black a CD for me. I go for all the white black groups like Jurassic 5, Blackalicious, De La, etc. I guess blackness is all about audience. I wonder why it is that all the truly blackest artists have like no black fans? Like are there any black folk out there listening to Archie Shepp? Or, for that matter, any white folk listening to Teena Marie?

Maybe it's more about commerciality vs. art. Like, Foxy Brown and De La Soul are equally black, but Foxy is more blanketly commercial, and therefore comes across to a larger percentage of the black mainstream. And since white critics won't "get" Foxy Brown, but they will "get" De La, white kids get turned onto De La.

So in keeping with my pointless contrarianism, I ought to champion this CD as the biggest, blackest masterpiece of all time. But then I'd be one of those insufferable white critics who tries to be all black and stuff.

Ah, whatever, I get what I get and there you have it. I get this disc enough to not rate it a Blank Stare, but definitely not enough to love it. I fully accept Foxy Brown's right to rate me a four, as well.

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Review by Michaelangelo Harry Potter Chewbacca