Most of us Golden Era Hip Hop veterans know Flav as the colorful sidekick of “The
Rhyme Animal” Chuck D. He was
the front man of the legendary Public
Enemy and Flav served as the
comic relief to make group’s politically charged and militant material more
palatable. He was known as not only Hip Hop’s most celebrated, but the
original hype man. Being familiar with Flavor’s solo joints (“911 Is A Joke,” “Soul Power,” etc.) I didn’t
expect any ground-breaking, lyrically astounding material. However, due to
his recent success and newfound fan base who wouldn’t know the difference
between P.E. and ER, we must allow him to re-introduce
himself. It is evident from his TV show (VH1’s “The Flavor of Love”) that
today’s listening audience is not familiar with the Flavalicious catalog, and need to be (old)schooled.
Hollywood has Flav in regular form, which can best be
described as all over the place. The album finds him delving into personal
topics that we are familiar with, such as his many children (“I Ain’t Scared”),
his time at Riker’s and various other prisons (“Bridge of Pain”), and
relationships gone bad (“Two Wrongs”). He takes note from fellow Hip-Hoppers-turned
thespians-turned-crooners-turned-Hip-Hoppers-again, Mos Def and Andre 3000
and tries his hand at singing on a throughout the album. Instead of giving
us another The Love Below, he comes
close to crowning himself as the William
Hung of Hip Hop. The singing is at times entertaining (“Let it Show,” “Two
Wrongs”) and at other times terribly painful (“Hotter Than Ice,” which is an
ill-fated attempt at a country/western ballad). The one thing that is
evident from his pseudo-musical rants is that Flav is doing what he does best: having fun.
This album would not be complete without the b-boy
braggadocio of the era that Flavor
originates from. On “Guess Whooz Back,” Mr.
Drayton attempts to mesh his old-school flow with a brief flash of modern
lyricism, “Keep the party fresh like
funky fresh vegetables/tomatoes, potatoes/still fuckin’ runnin’ from that dick
in the plain clothes/when I’m on the road I keep my dick in a raincoat/blimp
with a rainbow/bon-bons, wontons, soup and an egg roll.” These moments are
few and far between. On “Hot 1” he shows his age with lines like “Mack the flavaframalama and super duper
tactics/my first name gym last name nastics/don’t practice/flippin on emcees like
a mattress.” On “Col-Leepin” he reinterprets his own “Cold Lampin” with
Flavor. This piece has your man
rapping over an interpolation of The
Beastie Boys classic “Brass Monkey,” and, oh yeah, he never tells us what
in the hell a “Col-Leepin” is. This is the same for much of the album;
it’s hard to follow the direction of the lyrical content on some of the songs (“Wonder
Why”) and choruses that have nothing to do with the verses (“I Ain’t Scared”). You
won’t find any Kanye, 9th Wonder, or
Bomb Squad tracks on here, but the
backdrop for this opus makes it more bearable. This is a change from Flav always being the one who lightened
the tone for his group.
“The Flavor of Love” has the McDonald’s effect on America: You know that it’s bad and
has no nutritional value whatsoever, but you can’t stop eating it because it’s
so good. I’m guessing this is the effect they were aiming for with Hollywood. We
should’ve expected an album to be somewhere lurking, due to the success of the
show and not to mention the Flavorization of the masses. We should’ve
taken heed to the songs in the show (yes, I watch it religiously), which are
the albums two most recognizable tracks (:Flavor-Man,” “Platinum”). Despite
these facts and the overall quality of the album, how mad can we be at Flavor? He actually made the album
a lot of artists would love to make, which is the album that he wanted to make
and not the labels standard. Let me rephrase that – no label would let
anyone else make this type of album. And it’s very ironic that the man who
once proclaimed “Burn Hollywood Burn” would name his first project Hollywood.
This may satisfy Flavette-hopefuls
and 106 & Parkers, but for you die hard P.E. fans, this album is more “Fufi-Fufi” than “Fight The Power.”