The Jive recording artist returns with his fourth album since retirement in 1996. With a career spanning the median age of the average rap consumer, the rear guard of revelry can sound out of place at times. How else can one account for the phenomena of a thirty-six-year-old rapper un-retiring to release his fourteenth album, at a time when, musically speaking, pimpin’ really ain’t that easy. As the left coast’s first authentic rapstar who stacked up a scrapyard of precious metal during rap’s golden age from the late eighties through the mid nineties to ensure his place in rap’s hallway of fame, $hort’s influence can be heard from Jay-Z to Juvenile, from Tupac to Tim Dog.
What’s My Favorite Word? comes with new twists in production to keep it gullified. “That’s Right” and “The Old Fashioned Way” are notable for the fascinating monologue stringing the two songs together. The pimp running it down to a prospective ho provides a sideways glimpse into the guiding principle of many latter-day meal-ticket rap missionaries: Anything goes when it comes to ho’s. For those still purchasing their music the old-fashioned way “Pimpin’ Ken” may strike a chord. The Screw-y “Quit Hating”, with its southern-fried refrain from Lil’ Jon &c. that morphs into warped rotation for retards could be a signpost for the organic musical direction in which the artist is headed. No rap album from the slang-and-bhang would be complete without a tribute to the cannabis fields of California; “Cali-O” features E-40 and Dwayne Wiggins (Tony Toni Toné) buzzing around as a proud sponsors of the purple ape potent flava.
Winding down, “Pimp Life”, with Devin The Dude and Bigg Gipp over the skin-tight snare, kick, and pluck, is vintage $hort molded from classics like “The Ghetto”. Petey Pablo weighs in on “Call It Gangster” and tips the scales in favor of some comfortably southern hospitality. The George Clinton backed finale “The Movie” coasts to a rumbling and tingling and tumbling undertone to close out the latest addition to the voluptuous body of work of one Hip Hop’s honorary pimp’s.
