E-40 - The D-Boy Diary Books 1 & 2

Pitchfork 68

E-40 only released one project in 2015—unusual by the prolific rapper's standards. After dropping nothing but double and triple albums on an annual basis since 2010, a 7-song EP felt might’ve felt scant in comparison to the tomes to which we had grown accustomed to receiving; instead, the succinctness of Poverty and Prosperity felt like fresh air rushing into a cellar that hadn’t been opened in decades. But a fundamental shift in the Bay Area legend’s approach to disseminating his music the EP was not. With The D-Boy Diary: Books 1 and 2, E-40 returns to the firehose method that over the past six years has become his default mode. Except this time around there’s an increasing sense that he’s beginning to repeat himself.

The most obvious example: “Uh Huh” is a shameless retread of E-40’s own “Choices (Yup),” the now gold-certified track from 2014’s Sharp on All 4 Corners. It uses the same call-and-response format, except it swaps out “Yup” and “Nope” for the nearly synonymous “Uh huh” and “Mm mm.” Even its beat is a simulacrum of its predecessor’s eerie slink, only less eerie and less slinky. Of course, being as inventive a rapper as he is, E-40 still manages to cram “Uh Huh” with novel swaths of wordplay: “Your paper shorter than a fake smile (Mm mm!)/My paper longer than a murder trial (Uh huh!).” It’s not the only instance of déjà vu—many of the double album’s 44 tracks feature production that recalls earlier E-40 material in broad strokes if not exact configurations: squelchy synths, block-shaped percussion, and an endless buoyancy.

Which isn’t to say that any of these beats are bad; there’s nary a dud in the entire batch, but they do feel slightly less imaginative than they have in the past. The sheer amount of music on most E-40 projects can amplify this issue—when the beats are as homogeneous as they are here, even the slightest dip in quality will produce uneventful stretches. For every “Hunedz,” whose hydraulic bounce comes courtesy of hyphy pioneer Rick Rock, there’s a “Bag on Me,” which hits all the required marks but not particularly enthusiastically, or boilerplate hyphy like “The Grit Don’t Quit.” All of E-40’s usual in-house collaborators are here: from his son Droop-E—whose three contributions are all highlights, the inside-out lurch of “Goon Music” standing tallest—to fellow Californian DecadeZ, all the producers enlisted deliver beats that range from guaranteed function-starters to merely functional.

As with most of the E-40’s gargantuan projects, the moments that fall furthest from the mean stylistically tend to be found towards the tail-end of each volume. Book 1’s “Check” is a collaboration with Zaytoven, and the Atlanta producer known best for his work with the likes of Gucci Mane and Future serves up one of his iciest tracks in recent memory, full of slow-rolling menace and verging-on-EDM wubs. “2 Seater,” from Book 2, is the most conspicuously anomalous beat on the whole project. Nard N B bring a pop sensibility to the Kid Ink-featuring love song, and E-40 brags about how for a special night out with his girl he “booked this room on Hotels.com.” The track’s low-friction glide sets it apart from the rest of the album’s bottom-heavy focus, but it suits E-40, a rapper who has always had a strong ear for beats.

It helps that even though the production sometimes leans run-of-the-mill, E-40 remains as enamored as ever with the physical act of rapping. Nowhere does he sound more energized than on “I Had It in a Drought,” a joyous back-in-the-day reminiscence that naturally doubles as a brag session. The main character of the song, however, is not E-40 himself but rather the Bay Area itself: “On Solano Avenue, I bought a clothing store/In Vallejo, California: entrepreneur/Next to Davenport, Elite Check Cashing store/Across the street from Church's Chicken, it was on/A couple of doors down, Studio Ton.” His lyrics are so hyper-specific that you can find the actual street view using Google Maps. And on an album where his rubber-ball cadence belies his age (49!), it’s no surprise that he sounds most youthful rapping about his second favorite topic (after E-40): his hometown.

Straight thoughts delivered with zig-zagging technique: this has always been E-40’s formula. It sounds simple; in reality, it’s anything but. His rapping style—all over the beat without being bucked off, simultaneously pushing and pulling in all directions—is one that few if any try to approximate at all, let alone lift wholesale. It’s so inextricably linked with him that it would sound alien coming from anyone else. And the rub is he makes it sound as natural as breathing. “I’m a master of reality/Rap about good times and casualties” he raps on “Blessed By the Game.” There’s always been an underlying current of civic duty in his music, an unquenchable need to document the events around him for the benefit of future generations—and this one, too. The D-Boy Diary is just further proof that as long as he’s alive, E-40 won’t stop.