With truncated attention spans gone global, awesome activity consistently leaves a greater impression than an awesome album. Why drop one dope project a year when dropping three mediocre offerings will garner greater e-attention? Why release a seventy-seven minute collection of songs when the average person’s average commute is less than sixty? Efficiency is paramount in the internet age. Less is more. The EP is the new album.
In that sense, T3 just may be on to something. Rather than rolling out a gluttony of tunes ready-made to be forgotten as soon as the newest web sensation shifts in the next hour, Slum Village’s most polarizing member succinctly released, 3iller – an uber-sleek 14.4 minutes of plodding bass lines and suitable rhymes. “3-iller to be exact. / Yep, I put my life into porn, / moving bitches. / This is the soundtrack,” he raps on the “Intro” to his brief foray.
The salaciousness continues on “Give Me A Beat” (featuring K.E.Y.S.). Young RJ’s hopping, hollowed drums and faint strings dancing like wind chimes in the distance roam lovely as T3 rambles about Viagra, D-cups and chicks playing with his Willy Wonka. His flow is absolutely inspired even if littered with unassuming punchlines. The obligatory ode to the Motor City, “Motor Freaks”
is the definition of skippable, failing to resonate on any level deeper than this-is-what-I-keep-in-the-whip-type-rhymes. If there’s a metaphor floating beneath the commonplace commentary, it might as well be nonexistent. If there’s one hundred things to be said about “Detroit” or “Motor City” or “cars” period, T3 devotes his time to talking about numbers ninety-eight and ninety-nine – the list’s least interesting. It’s the exact opposite of clever. “Pardon my Tourette’s. / I be screamin’ out shit. / Quick to tell a bitch, ‘Bitch, you ain’t about shit,’” he spits on closing cypher rhyme, “Never Enuff,” three-minutes and seventeen-seconds of brooding redemption following “Motor City’s” laziness.
3iller is at its best on “Hello World.” It’s good to hear a sense of purpose and passion amidst car raps and porn fantasies. T3 speaks directly to his personal demons and bouts with alcohol, then aptly hones in on his ultimate legacy:
AD LOADING...
“Now when it’s all said and done, / When I’m just a spirit no ox [oxygen] in my lounges, / When I’m just a memory, remember me because / I was most slept on. / A bed not a futon. / Not an Emcee but a staple in The D. / A visionary man. / I swear I had the key, / to the world. Damn, / And you know we made classics. / Three of us, / Four of us, / Whatever. / Magic.”
T3 keeps it quick and sleek on 3iller. In five tracks, he talks tits and ass, cypher rhymes, whips and Slum Village – not a bad balance, yet not a fresh balance either. His tendency to dance in the obvious is the EP’s greatest detraction. But at less than fifteen minutes, it’s short enough to replay repeatedly before it inevitably plays itself out. It’s a clear representation of the odd psychological paradigm of the internet era. In a weird way, 3iller is too brief to hate.
