Backspin: Redman — Muddy Waters (1996)

Redman’s surrealist dreamscape lays the groundwork for a lyrical pilgrimage. (90.5/100)

Image from Def Jam Music Group

Originally Published 12/3/22 on Medium.

“Now haul ass, I got a meetin’ ‘bout seven,” Redman orders an overzealous cop as the virtuoso middle verse of “What U Lookin’ 4” approaches its apex.

“Basically, I’m saying bye bye like Guy.”

He tricks me every time; has for over two decades. Whether out loud or in my head, I invariably rap “saying bye bye like Tevin.”

Given the established rhyme scheme, Redman’s propensity to use pop culture as punctuation, and the popularity of Tevin Campbell’s 1992 single, “Goodbye,” the dismount is clearly careening toward “Tevin”.

By the midpoint of Muddy Waters’ uncharacteristically tense 19th track, I should know better.

True to form, Redman zigs when we’re primed for a zag. He leaves “seven” to hang unresolved, packing the verse’s final rhymed couplet into the truncated space of four syllabically unbalanced words by recalling Guy’s “Goodbye Love”.

To those familiar with the urban lore surrounding the seminal New Jack Swing ballad’s opening ad libs, it’s also a slickly subliminal way of calling the cop a “dumb bitch”.

That seemingly whimsical sleight of hand perfectly captures the free-association surrealism that makes the Newark, New Jersey lyrical iconoclast’s labyrinthian 3rd album such a captivating listen.

Syllables bend and contort. Rhyme schemes collapse into themselves and re-emerge as newly realized configurations. Trains of thought jump tracks only to land at the inevitable destination via uncharted tunnels and bridges. The end result is an eerily calibrated album, seemingly finding balance in its randomness en route to one of the genre’s most synaptically stimulating listening experiences.

As with his previous outings, Muddy Waters opens with Redman’s Dr. Trevis alter ego, equal parts psychiatrist and shaman, offering guidance to the rapper as he embarks on the album’s journey. But where Trevis previously pushed Redman to the edge, urging him to unleash his “unnecessary anger” on 1992’s Whut? Thee Album, and extolling him to take 1994’s Dare Iz a Darkside to “where no other LP has ever risen,” here Trevis seems to be reining the rapper in.

“Wake up, Redman, wake up!” a frantic Trevis urges at the start of the intro, as if trying to shake his patient out of the previous album’s Jacob’s Ladder nightmare-scape. A tribal chant rises in the mix as Redman seemingly returns to the land of the living.

“You must stay focused,” Trevis continues “you must focus your mind.”

Indeed, Muddy Waters feels like Redman’s quest to steady a racing brain by teasing out patterns, symmetries, and linguistic logic to order the synaptic chaos. As such, the album unfolds in an elusive sort of dream logic, presenting the recognizable hip-hop landscape of 1996 through the filter of id-fueled abstractions and fun house mirror distortions.

Tellingly, we get two full tracks of Redman seemingly re-acclimating himself to the conventions of earthly MCing before the audience is officially invited to the program with the “Welcome” interlude. Serving as a de facto prelude, “Iz He For Real” and “Rock Da Spot” signal a pronounced sonic and stylistic departure from the poorly received Dare. Gone is the bubbling caldron of tense electro funk, replaced by ambient mid-tempo boom-bap, complete with warm filters and copious open spaces.

Redman responds in kind, grounding his boastful rhymes in the standard fare of the day: blunts, brews, guns and lyrical superiority. It’s the Jackson Pollock meets Rudy Ray Moore derring-do of his approach that makes it feel fresh as farmers’ market produce, even today.

A preponderance of self-indulgent skits stalled many a ’90s hip-hop album. On Muddy Waters, the battery of sketches and interludes serve to steady the dizzying twists and turns of the rhymes, helping orient us within specific terrains amid the vast landscape traversed.

Following “Welcome (Interlude),” Case Closed” anchors the album at the epicenter of the contemporary hip-hop scene with a torrid posse cut. The presence of hungry newcomer Napalm and producer Rockwilder, taking a rare turn at the mic, seem to heighten Redman’s focus, resulting in one of his more aggressive battle rhymes. No sacred cows are spared, with everything from nuns to the then-recent Oklahoma City bombing fair game for a punchline.

“Pick It Up” lands even more squarely in the middle ground. Erick Sermon’s crisp drums and rubbery bassline make it a natural party starter, while Redman’s playful hook practically begs audience participation. The buoyant bounce actually belies the oddball wit and dark humor that make the rhymes crackle, culminating in an irreverent reference to the Rodney King beating and the economy car in which he was allegedly speeding:

Drop skills that might send wind chill
Factors, back through Patterson, J.C
And Hacken-
sack. Step uncorrect and get blackened
The assassin, findin’ MCs by the jasmine
I don’t tote guns, I tote funds
While you still puzzled how my anecdote runs
Your whole vocabulary’s played out, admit it
Still wack if it came out my mouth and I spit it
You remind me of school on a Sunday - no class
Beatin’ all kings down, doin’ over seventy in a Hyundai, blast!
Give em a good reason to open Alcatraz
Back, Nobody got the Red shook
Been a weirdo ever since the doctor said “PUSH!”

The now-classic single abruptly gives way to a short skit providing a tour of Newark’s “glorious weed spots”, which serves as a humorous segue into the smokers’ portion of the album. As imaginatively as Redman articulates the elevating virtues of his favorite herb, it actually seems to ground him. “Smoke Buddah” and the breakout hit “Whateva Man”, provide Muddy Waters with two of its most tightly structured songs, linear narratives, and infectious hooks.

Things quickly veer back towards the esoteric. The “Chicken Head Convention” skit seemingly sets up the party section of the album, the emergence of scandalous women signaling the night is “on and poppin’ out this motherf***er.”

But instead of an adrenaline fueled turn up session, “On Fire” and “Do What Ya Feel” offer the hazy comfort of a smoked out house party. With the former produced by Sermon, Redman’s mentor and go-to beatmaker, and the latter featuring the Chong to his Cheech, Method Man, both tracks bubble with a lived in familiarity that seemingly frees Redman to indulge his free-association impulses to their fullest.

Perhaps the most under-appreciated element of Red and Meth’s legendary microphone chemistry is their teamwork. The two lyrical heavyweights never seem to be sparring in bouts of one-upmanship, opting instead for a tag team approach, in which each MC sets the other up to showcase his strengths. On “Do What Ya Feel,” Meth leans into his suede smooth vocal texture, allowing his gravelly voice to luxuriate in the foreboding ambiance of Pras Michel’s beat. Meth meticulously sets the table for Red to devour the track, packing every crevice with tightly coiled syllables of rapid fire braggadocio.

Red and Meth channeling the Blues Brothers in the “Whateva Man” music video, circa 1996 (Image from Def Jam Music Group)

The waters get muddier with “The Stick Up,” a jarring robbery skit setting up the album’s “hardcore” section. But while Redman hits all the requisite street beats, he deftly sidesteps the crime rhyme cliches that were starting to feel redundant by late ‘96.

“Creepin’” starts with Redman wittily sketching out a literal robbery. By the second verse the jux turns metaphorical. Redman is raiding the pockets of subpar MCs who floss material possessions in lieu of rhyme skills. His loaded weapon is his lethal lyricism, complete with an inside-hip-hop punchline that takes on an added layer with the knowledge that Whodini’s Jalil wrote rhymes for his partner Ecstasy:

I scoop up Keith, and see who’s flashin’ at the Palla-
-dium. Hide your weed, n****s, cause here I come
Lookin’ bummy for low profile, so loud MCs overlook me
I slip the bartender some raw
Just to tell me how much cash and Dom P you pour
Huuuh! I should start robbin’ rappers in the industry
If we ain’t cliquin’, then I’m engineerin’ your injuries
Forty-eight tracks of automatics and MACs
Lyrically splat-datted ‘til your mentality black
And I don’t give a f*** if you did thirty bids
Still I bring you ecstasy like I’m the rapper Jalil

“It’s Like That (My Big Brother)” draws its grit from the barebones aesthetic as Red trades boasts with his former Hit Squad partner, K-Solo, over a drum track as hard as the penitentiary steel behind which Solo spent the previous three years. “Da Bump” lives up to its name, the deep grind of the bassline from Tyron Davis’s “In the Mood” providing enough rumble to register on the Richter scale. Red matches the heft of Sermon’s track with wordplay every bit as dense:

So inhale, exhale - what you smell?
Derail the frail blind MC off my trail
If he use braille, see I never been touched
Regulate the street tactics then parlay in the cut

The aforementioned “What U Lookin’ 4” offers the album’s single moment of gravity, demonstrating that Redman can not only spin a topical narrative, but also a bracing social commentary. While critiques of racist policing were hardly new to hip-hop, Red’s reminder of the frightening reality proves particularly jarring as it penetrates Muddy Waters’ surrealist escapism.

Just as the album began in prologue, it ends in epilogue as “Rollin’” finds Redman seemingly having achieved the balance for which he’s been searching. He ensconces himself in the the pulsating ominousness of the beat to unfurl raw dog rhyme strings. “Da Ill Out” abruptly closes the disc with a relentless posse cut featuring Keith Murray and Jamal, and actually manages to do the near impossible, leaving you hungry for more at the end of a nearly 70 minute feast.

While “best” Redman album will likely remain a raging debate as long as basement barbershops and hip-hop Twitter exist, it’s safe to say Muddy Waters represents his “Goldilocks” moment. If Dare Iz a Darkside proved too insular in its density, and 1998’s Doc’s da Name 2000 veered too far towards cartoonishness in packaging Red’s colorful persona for the masses (albeit to platinum success), Muddy Waters gets it just right. As a body of work, it embodies the balance that Redman seemed to be seeking via his lyrical excursions.

It also established a singular lane for Redman, firmly paved in the rap world but not quite of it; impervious to the hardening divides aggressively segmenting hip-hop at the time. He was lyrical enough for the purists, grimy enough for the hard rocks, and uncannily adept at lacing sneakily infectious beats with playful hooks for the party people. His affiliation with EPMD and embrace of thick electro-funk soundscapes (though decidedly muted here) even endeared him to discerning west coast heads at the height of the regional wars.

Released just two months after 2Pac’s murder and three month’s before Biggie’s, Muddy Waters achieves what perhaps only Redman could. It seems to exist in its own space and time, impenetrable to the danger and discord of the moment. With hip-hop struggling to find order in the chaos in of a culture at war with itself, a surrealist swim through the muddy waters of Redman’s mind proved a welcome escape from streets, rhymes, and life suddenly turned all too real.

By the Numbers

Production: 9.5
Lyrics (how the words are put together): 10
Delivery & Flow: 10
Content (Substance): 9
Cohesiveness: 10
Consistency: 9.5
Originality: 9
Listenability: 9
Impact/Influence: 7
Longevity: 7.5

Total — 90.5

Backspin is a look back at the albums that shaped and defined hip-hop. It explores what made them resonate, the impact they had on the culture, and where they fit in today’s ever-expanding hip-hop canon.