Mozzy - Mandatory Check

Pitchfork 68

The 2002 2Pac documentary Thug Angel: The Life of an Outlaw contains footage of the rapper giving insight into his prolific recording process, an approach which would prove just as influential as his music. “We don’t have the time or the luxury to spend all this time doing one song,” he said. “I know it ain’t all that, but I did my whole album three songs a day... You can mix it later and have niggas that love being in the studio all night just adding the drum beat…after the rappers leave... For while we’re in here, and you’ve got eight rappers here, everybody drinking and smoking and shit? Man, get that beat popping, throw them niggas on the track, boom. The name of the song is whatever this nigga said, what his last word was.”

2Pac wasn’t suggesting he was too busy to work at his craft, but that for an oral art form like hip-hop, his relevance was an extension of his productivity. This was a timely and unmediated connection with his audience, suggesting to the next generation they had no need for major label budgets or months of careful revision and rehearsal to release urgent music. (If anything, he seems to imply it could stop up the creative process.) Building on that idea, Mozzy and other artists in this lineage don’t structure recording around carefully selected singles campaigns and yearly album releases. Instead, Mozzy has built his audience through 2014 and 2015 by keeping his signal-to-noise ratio high despite a prolific release schedule, flanking well-funded and better publicized stars.

Mandatory Check is his second solo release of 2016 after February’s Beautiful Struggle EP, and its inconsistency is an argument not that Mozzy has slipped—he remains one of the foremost narrative stylists in hip-hop—but that he’s yet to transition to a more mainstream distribution model. Indeed, in the last year he’s released a handful of collaborative records and appeared on a dozen more—records with Bay Area rapper Stevie Joe, with supergroup One Mob, crew album Hexa Hella Extra Head Shots 2, and albums from crew members Hus Mozzy, Celly Ru, and EMozzy. Not to mention his guest appearances with Nipsey Hussle, YG, Nef the Pharaoh, etc.

No matter how talented the artist, this level of prolificacy means his own album isn’t as potent as it could be. A record like his Stevie Joe collaboration “2 Bitches” would easily be top-tier single material if it appeared here, and his tormented verse on One Mob’s “Stranger to the Pain” sticks to the ribs in a way that makes much of Mandatory Check feel slight in comparison. Mandatory Check’s token R&B record “Like Me” is tossed off relative to 2015’s “Wat It Izzery Luv,” a song that used lived-in details to weave a relationship story with heart. And his own recent solo single “Killa City”—an attempt at peacekeeping in the midst of an internecine inter-city street beef—has an urgency that would stand out were it included on his latest release.

That said, close listening will reward the rapper’s fervent fanbase. Particular highlights include the aching “Love My N****z,” with sunset production courtesy longtime collaborator June Onna Beat, and the funky “Brought Up,” (“Don’t worry about the dreads bitch I like the shit matted up!”). Lead single “So 4Real,” though, may best capture the moral contradictions that permeate Mozzy’s music and life. It closes with a harrowing passage in which perverse bravado and violent shame collide, and the lines hint at this eye for storytelling detail: “Threw him in the back of the Audi and yanked off/Hit him with a FN bullet, he can’t walk/Fending for himself, his momma got laid off/She was smoking dope in the closet, young boy heartbroken when he opened the closet/Liability with all the damage we causin’, such a beautiful struggle, say it ain’t you jawsin’.”

Mandatory Check is an imperfect entry point, which is a disappointment only because for many, this will be their first exposure to the rapper’s catalog. It was clearly recorded in haste, a snapshot of a moment rather than the culmination of an aesthetic. (Though likely recorded under similarly hurried circumstances, newcomers may find 2015’s Gangland Landscape a more rewarding listen and a better overall summation of the rapper’s appeal.) But if the multitude of guest verses and songwriting or production whiffs undercut him, his verses remain the consistent core of his art.