You might not have heard of 88 Keys, but it doesn't matter. Soon enough you'll find more about him on the site than a mere mention on a Black Star review. And it starts with this: the appetizer before the main course -- The Death of Adam comes on October. Feed!
Mike Jones is clearly not as talented as his fellow Houstonians Paul Wall and Slim Thug. Yet he was chosen to be the forerunner of the phenomenon that Houston rap has been this year. Where his mic skills are lacking, he makes up for it with charisma and self-promotion brilliance. Seeing that the music industry isn’t a meritocracy, those things can sure go a long way. By the end of this album, even someone with Alzheimer’s won’t forget Mike Jones’s name - or his phone number, for that matter.
Record Author(s): Mike Jones
Record Title: Who Is Mike Jones?
Record Producer(s): Salih Williams, Mike B, DJ Paul & Juicy "J", Kojack, Sears, Pretty Todd, Young Hollywood, Antwane "Amadeus" Thompson, Michael "5000" Watts
Executive Producer(s): G-Dash & Michael "5000" Watts
Release Date: April 19, 2005
In terms of transporting you to a reverie of crawling the streets in a candy-painted car while rolling on Vogues and 24-inch rims when you’re actually driving your parents’ hand-me-down (without woodgrain, mind you) that stalled in the intersection last week, there’s no better album. The beats rattle your trunk with unstoppable intensity on Turning Lane and deliver a surprisingly hard-hitting sample of the Nutcracker Suite with Got It Sewed Up [Remix].
The problem is that there are only so many ways to rap about drinking prescription cough syrup and flashing princess cut diamonds. Mike Jones ends up repeating a lot of lines, but it’s unclear if it’s because he can’t think of anything else to say or if he was so pleased with how the last four bars sounded that he just had to hit his fans with it one more time. Oftentimes, he’ll drive the point home with an “I said…” and repeat his lines again. Of course, this is all irrelevent if you’re partying hard and rapping along, but your patience might be stretched by the time you get to the chopped and screwed disc on your headphones.
His favorite line is “Two-eight-one, three-three-oh, eight-zero-zero-fo’ / Hit Mike Jones up on the low / Cuz Mike Jones about to blow”; it transcends mere song boundaries to become the album anthem. While some may criticize him for using a gimmick to excess, Mike Jones gets away with it because it’s so damn catchy. It’s only after the CD stops that I feel ashamed that I don’t even have my own mother’s cell phone number memorized but I can recite Mike Jones’ at the drop of a hat.
Even Mike Jones seems aware of his album’s limited scope and he takes timely breaks to diss scandalous hoes, reflect on his future, and give a heartwarming shoutout to his loving grandmother. (Seriously, there’s no better way to bring it all together and end the album.) Oh and let’s not forget the requisite track “for the ladies, baby." Though none of these tracks, save for Grandma, are particularly good, they provide a welcome change of pace. But, maybe if you’re surrounded by purple haze and the syrup-thick production of the lead single Still Tippin’, you couldn’t care less.
