DJ Clue?: The Professional Part 3

Because mixtape producer DJ Clue? doesn’t like leftovers, six years have passed between the last installment of his Professional series. Since the last volume in 2000, he’s started his own Desert Storm label while also contributing production and beats to Jay Z’s Hard Knock Life tour. So I guess we can cut him a little bit of slack for the gap in time. And also remember that since he likes the finest of cuts, and doesn’t work with the heavily circulated tracks like most mixtape artists do, you’d figure much of the time is spent on waiting for the goods to come trickling in from contributors like Nas, Rick Ross, Kayne West, Consequense, the Game, Snoop Dogg, etc.

But it’s also been said that good things come to those who wait. But on The Professional, Pt. 3 he’s not the traditional mixtape producer, the liner notes only give him credit for 6 tracks, and the only time you really “hear” him is during the self-promotional and annoying echoes — and ultimately the album doesn’t have any real specific character or distinct style to it. Even though Clue? has stretched his sonicographical boarders a little bit further, beyond the NYC Boroughs into the Dirty South with other reach to the West Coast, sadly not much jumps off the menu of supposedly exclusive A-list choices.

Wisely, DJ Clue? turned to Nas to open with “War”. Over an engaging mix of climatic strings and synth that are punctuated by heavy, brassy beats of bass, Nas spits a fiery freestyle stream of autobiographical syllables. “Sweated it out gangster / Living the skyscraper / Platinum patrol drinkers / Stacking the grown paper / God pushed me out his nuts / Devil swallowed me up / I burnt a whole in his guts”. Nas, as usual, seeks lyrical controversy as the title foreshadows, and the album is dramatic from the start.

From New York to the Dirty South, DJ Clue goes to Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, and Ransom, who do some serious club thuggin’ in “Clear Da Scene”, a pimp-perfect calibration for a dark and crunky nightclub where the only redemption lies in the welcomed migraine-inducing beat, which almost drowns out the dreadful dance floor-clearing chorus.

Speaking of thugs and dance floors, there’s Snoop Doog’s “Almost F*cked”, a slithery and silky doggy style verbiage delivered over a beat that immediately sticks to your bones. But once you realize the D-O-double-G is up to his same old tricks and really only wants to mount the next set of luscious lady lumps, the song loses its impact and “the riot on the dance floor” is extinguished as fast as it started.

With a title like “F*ck off”, Young Jeezy’s track makes clear what is his and no one else’s, and appearently there ain’t no one who is going to take it from him neither. The beat on this one is harsh and vicious and is so riotously tasty… but it would be a gem in my pocket only if lifted out of the nightclub crew vs. crew scene cliché and dropped into a poignant political context.

The Game and Mario Winans contribute a two-part love and rap reminiscent saga with “A Week Ago Part 1&2”. You have to wait several tracks to hear the ending as Part 1 shows up — followed by Kanye West and Fabulous’ semi-memorable “Like This” — at track six, while the un-climatic wrap-up reappears near the album’s end. The Game’s style improves each time you hear him, and he has no problem remembering his Dre-watered roots. He also does well showing the softer gangster side, but his next move has to be out from under the umbrella of Dre adoration and into the flexing of his own future in rap.

Hip-hop blends a hard boiled detective novel in Mobb Deep’s “Gold”. The track slides along a sparkling sample of the Three Degrees version of the jazzy soul tune “Lady of Gold”, turning the song into a double metaphor hidden in a late night stroll descriptively told through the lens of a hard boiled detective novelist. This is what the club thug genre of hip-hop needs more of if it is to add anything meaningful to hip-hop in the long run.

Since Consquence’s “Uptown” is the last thing you hear on the The Professional, Pt. 3, you have a chance to cleanse your mind and keep the good vibe rolling via the upbeat chorus that should be blasted from car speakers. Hidden in the midst of an infectious beat and off-kilter production is a complex story of keeping the eye on the prize regardless of worldly distractions — much needed after most of what you hear on the eighteen tracks.

In order to give The Professional, Pt. 3 a fair shake, I have to remind myself that DJ Clue? doesn’t appear inspired to mix songs like an old school beat juggler, or to create new brilliance out of discarded hand-me-downs gems like a DJ Shadow type. He seems to have gotten away from the vision of his former occupation, a beat-mixing radio DJ, and has this time around served up an average-tasting menu that promotes the latest tracks off his own personal hand picked A-list of what he considers hot in hip-hop at the moment.

So I’ll take some of the goodies, stay positive about hip-hop’s future, and move on down the road.