R.A. The Rugged Man
R.A.'s Legendary Classics
R.A. the Rugged Man is one of those legendary lost-in-the-shuffle rap auteurs, a story of absolute incompatibility with record labels probably exacerbated by his silly name, his insiders-only rap style and his tendency to record tracks with titles like “Every Record Label Sucks Dick.” Jive shelved his debut in 1992, and it took him twelve years after that to get a new record in stores. He’s got a big, burly voice and a ramrod flow, falling somewhere between Beanie Sigel and Freddie Gibbs in general palatability. He says awful things. One track here is called “Cunt Renaissance.”
If he turns up on your iPod at all it’s in a strange place, an unreleased cut somewhere deep on a blog mix or as a guest spot on an album you haven’t spun in awhile. So it’s a very good thing that Nature Sounds has collected these tracks, because otherwise who knows when they would have seen the light of day. While the Soundbombing 2 standout “Stanley Kubrick” will ring bells immediately, most of the other tracks are either unreleased or buried guest spots from albums like the briefly noteworthy Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture. The track R.A. cut with Big John will be heard here for the first time ever by people who are not Big John.
Fortunately, though, the overall glut of music here is of overwhelming high quality, with a guest list that bespeaks R.A.’s reputation in New York rap: Mobb Deep, Sadat X, Notorious B.I.G. and Tragedy Khadafi all turn up. And while it’s nice to hear some vintage Biggy you probably haven’t before, the star of the show is R.A. himself, as technically accomplished an emcee as has hit the mic. He comes across as unhinged, both holding over a mid-90s horrorcore slant–check that axe in his brain on the cover–but also literally, lyrically off-base. On a track like “Supa” he will assemble a dizzyingly singular rhyme scheme (example: “The elite / We meet, meet defeat / Me be beat / Repeat / And this street life is cheap,” and so on ad infinitum) and drop that alongside fierce clunkers like “I’m ugly as shit, bitch, stop and stare.” He’s a remarkably pure emcee, giving the beat the rap it deserves whether it’s an extravagant nothing or a dense biographical portrait of his dad’s tenure in Vietnam. It’s disappointing, by album’s end, to hear him murdering a beat as lame as the faux-reggae bounce of “Posse Cut,” but a track like “Renaissance” is five-star stuff that belongs in any serious collection.
[...] Wow. First M.I.A.’s craziness and now this. R.A.’s verse from his collaboration with Jedi Mind Tricks finally gets the video treatment now that it recently resurfaced on his compilation album, Legendary Classics Vol. 1. [...]