The “other” is always paraded around as entertainment, yet vilified for it. These energies make music, especially Hip Hop, a march of contradictory forces. How do you, oh talented emcee, create a project that is both true to yourself and true to your ability to entertain? It’s a conundrum that everyone must transgress. The answers have been as varied as they have been successful. Tupac’s raw honesty, Biggie’s syllabic slow-flow, Lupe’s vast array of rhyme styles, Migos’s triplet cadence, all of these add up to a possible answer to the question stated above. In Baby Need Food, Maryland native Ace Cosgrove plays with this question but he does not necessarily answer it, making for a well-intentioned soul out that visits Ace’s many styles but does not quite bring his stop-start flow to the next level.
The 24-year-old has teamed up with upstate New York native Robbie Anthem, and Ace dances with the sole emcee and producer formula, which allows for a single vision to dominate the project. He also combines with fellow DMV emcees Vaunfe and Hassani Kwess, who are the only features on the tape. From Adrian Marcel to Fred The Godson and C-Plus, Anthem has etched out a niche for himself as a producer with a gift for soulful production aesthetics. And he delivers in that regard, for the most part, but something is lost in the undertow. There’s a lack of kinetic energy in the music that results, perhaps, from a bit too much reliance on creating a mood rather than expressing raw emotion. As such, Baby Need Food gets dragged down, partly, by the execution of Ace’s high-minded concepts not syncing well with the demure tones of the production. On “Loan Shark,” he muses on the hook, “The land of the free / Breathing air ain’t cheap / Tell me, young boy, would you kill for your dreams?” And he follows that up with, “His storytelling gold / If anyone would listen / Put the Christian and the Atheist in a position / That they share their last supper and vibe off each other / Hell yeah, praise the lord and not the land of the free…” But the track’s sound-bed doesn’t keep up with the intensity of the words or the flow, creating a disjointedness that it doesn’t recover from.
That isn’t all the tracks, however. When Ace and Robbie get it right, they often approach the beauty of, say, Blu & Exile’s Below The Heavens. “Emotional Cancer” is clothed by a thumping type of funk, melody and bass that carries the track to admirable heights. “Baby Need Clothes,” combines the base needs we all have with a kid wanting to choose his own path. It stands then, with the funk deep in tow, as an exploration of the circumstances that make the U.S having 25% of the world’s prison population a complicated issue. It provides perspective. “Baby need clothes / And something to eat,” cries Cosgrove, but by the end of the line he’s back to his truth with, “I ain’t sellin’ my soul / If the price is right / That’s the easy way out / I’m preparin’ for droughts.” And the “Come Live With Me” sample on “Bad Guy” hits just about all the right notes as electric guitar notes shake it off in the background.
The journey presented by Ace Cosgrove and Robbie Anthem is filled with the complex emotional background any 24-year-old faces these days. From the web’s main function as both a machine for outrage and it’s incandescent glow begging you not to take anything too seriously to what can be viewed as radio’s “everything sounds the same” modus operandi, Ace reaches out to you to bring things back down to earth. And while the intensity of his concepts doesn’t quite join up with the production’s dim-pianos, 70s horns, and shy bass-lines, Baby Need Food comes close enough to his lofty ideas to still inspire. It also proves that Ace is here to stay.
