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SMITTY FT. KANYE WEST, SCARFACE, AND JOHN LEGEND - GHETTO (2005)

It's sick, in every sense of the word, to think that I'm still moving through culture. I've lost a step. My hair is turning white, the kids laugh at the Pyrex Vision logo plastered across my ass, but I don't know what else to do with myself, and so I move onward.

The reappearance of the '03 XXL Freshmen list got me reminiscing on the raps of my youth that fell through the cracks. Little Haiti's Smitty earned local airplay and a Hype Williams video with "Diamonds on My Neck," an underrated slab of Swizzy 2.0, before his debut album was shelved and he was banished back to his old ghostwriter haunts. According to a Wikipeia citation terminating in a 404 error, Smitty is currently signed to Blackground/Interscope and will be releasing an album "in the near future." Time is relative. We may very well be banging new Smitty on our Nanos before this blog is updated again.

"Ghetto" is about as mid-00s as you could ask for: Kanye soul sample, John Legend providing the melodic counterpoint to Ye's talk-hook, a Scarface verse for some reason. I'm not complaining. Everything is so self-contained that Smitty ends up being an also-ran on his own track. Was Twista busy that day? Did someone owe Smitty a favor? His presence makes no sense, as if an armchair rapper deepfaked himself into the object of his fantasies.

STILL THE GREATEST USE OF A SWIZZ BEAT

Though paling in comparison to Jay-Z's transformation from Brooklyn's finest to the multimedia equivalent of modern lobby design, Swizzy's move from Casio bungler to minimalist visionary stands as one of the more impressive PR turnarounds of the era.  Maybe it was just displaced New York nostalgia in the age of Atlantan overthrow, but around '05 Swizz finally started getting respect from snobs who derided his tinkering style for being more "Chopsticks" than Rachmaninoff.  Of everything on Confessions of Fire, "Glory" is the earliest hint of the artist Cam was on his way to becoming; even better, you got N.O.R.E. what what!-ing on the hook.

Not for nothing, but the cover for Confessions of Fire look like something you would find behind saloon doors at a Chelsea video shop ca. '98.  You got Cam shirtless in leather overalls, lookin all pouty and airbrushed, holding a sledgehammer on top of a vat pouring out a money shot of smelted iron.  Add a few yellow guys in jean hotpants, and it's an average bacchanal at The Anvil.   Was the art director having a laugh at Cam's expense?  Whatever the truth may be, it's beginning to look like "no homo" was invented to make up for delicious past indiscretions.