The only thing worse than a double album by a rhyming actor whose only gimmick is wearing a band-aid is a double album where consumers must pay full price for each disc, when neither is worth the CDs they're burned on. Yes, the champion of voluntary personal disfigurement is back and back again and the exact same as everything else crammed down our minds like plungers of promotion by the RIAA propaganda machine. Taking a nod from Outkast's The Love Below / Speakerboxxx, Cornell "Nelly" Haynes Jr. has slapped together a club record to Sweat to and a sterile R&B disc to Suit the manufactured needs of sexless white women, and then separated them to make more money like any other mainstream commercial actor would. Each CD is crammed to a full 50 minutes with some of the most heinous crimes against good taste since Wham's "Wham Rap! '86," including an '80s sample destruction in the Puff Daddy vein of Spandu Ballet's "True" on "N Dey Say"; a misappropriation of Curtis Mayfield's Superfly theme to assist on an Aguilera track; and the intro to "Woodgrain And Leather Wit A Hole" that sees Cornell spewing bits of pseudo-spiritual pap, over and over, to a hypothetical girl he refers to only as "baby" 21 times in 65 seconds in an effort to "allow you, yourself, you see what I'm sayin', to become more with one with yourself"--whatever that's supposed to mean--before threatening to kill her for hearing him.
Even by Cornell's extremely shallow standards, this is unbelievably lazy production. The usual pop-hop samples of farty synths are picked fresh off the disc that came with Universal's sequencing program and sound at home alongside cheesy Santana riffs and all two levels of Nelly bass, all thrown together with the least amount of care possible. If it wasn't for the vast amount of collaborations, any normal human with half a soul could have conceived, written, produced, and recorded both albums over the course of an afternoon. But to effectively milk the cash cow and to benefit from other sell-out celebrities' status, Cornell had to pad out the expense list and let everyone he's ever met get a taste. No one with a shred of artistic integrity would be seen in the same grocery aisle as Nelly, and it shows with the quality of guests who stink up this assault on human decency. Of course Missy Elliott waddles by with her buddies Jermaine Dupri, Snoop Dogg, who informs us he wants weed and sex for the billionth time this week, and Pharrell Williams on their way to appear on every mainstream rap album in production. But more puzzling are names like country flake Tim McGraw, Christina Aguilera, and John Tesh... are these the names you think of when you hear the phrase "hip-hop" or, which is more, listenable music? How would Curtis feel about his classic Superfly being shat all over by Christina's shrill and Cornell's pointless sex beggings? The only time Cornell approaches a single plausible notion is on "Another One" where he eloquently proclaims, "I'm a muh-fucker! A mother fucker, muh-fucker!" This, I'm forced to believe, is a common practice around the Haynes residence. You can just see ol' Cornell Haynes Sr. a telling lil' Nelly, "quit readin' that book an' fuck ya' mamma!" That's the only explanation for thinking band-aids make you dynamic, the pronunciation of "er-buddy" instead of "everybody," and the hypocritical ignorance of threatening to kill a girl for listening to you and four tracks later swear to lay your life down for that bitch's child on "Die For You," as mind-numbing stupidity and selling out hand-over-fist can only account for so much.
The world really needs to wake up to the fact that this music is not just bad but bad for you. Nobody buys a Nelly record for the quality of the music but for the clarity of the image it projects. Four albums into the Nelly experiment and it's clear that, identical to almost every other pop act, there is nothing more to his character than money, bitches, power, and fake face wounds. I've dated women who can only feel sexy if they throw on shit like R. Kelly and Suit and wiggle around like a "Hot In Herrre" reject. You can see these women hovering in the corners of the dance floor at every pop night club. It's so sad. You can't just buy one of these cancerous CDs without buying into a lifestyle, a very expensive one full of knockoff perfumes (J.Lo, Britney), clothing lines (who doesn't have one now?), and sports drinks (Nelly makes sure to product place his horribly named Pimp Juice at least once here). Voluntarily listening to this shit stunts your spiritual growth. The only way to cut down on the sheer volume of this soul-rotting tripe the labels spew out constantly is to not buy it and not buy into it. I never thought I'd say this, but think of the children, will ya'? Get some Marvin Gaye or Al Green, for Jebus' sake.
Sweat:
1. Heart Of A Champion
2. Na-Nana-Na
3. Flap Your Wings
4. American Dream
5. River Don't Runnn feat. Murphy Lee
6. Tilt Ya Head Back feat. Christina Aguilera
7. Grand Hang Out feat. Fat Joe & Remy Martin
8. Getcha Getcha
9. Another One
10. Spida Man
11. Playa feat. Missy Elliott
12. Down In Da Water feat. Ali
13. Boy feat. Big Gipp & Lil' Flip
Suit:
1. Play It Off feat. Pharrell Williams
2. Pretty Toes
3. My Place feat. Jaheim
4. Paradise
5. She Don't Know My Name feat. Snoop Dogg & Ronald Isley
6. N Dey Say
7. Woodgrain And Leather Wit A Hole
8. In My Life feat. Mase
9. Over And Over feat. Tim McGraw
10. Nobody Knows feat. Anthony Hamilton
11. Die for You