Grow Up Jones

This guy kind of resembles one of my cousins.

Philadelphia rapper Zilla Rocca’s new project, the Nights & Weekends EP is kind of a concept record.  It definitely wants to be a concept record.  It starts with a thesis statement, and each song plays with the same signifiers, ideas, and themes, namely various anecdotes from a young cinephile’s best nights out.  This is cooled-out, culturally-aware, twenty-something theme music.  And, most of the time, it works.

Zilla succeeds most when he mixes the signifiers of cool that obviously take up a significant portion of his brain’s storage space with autobiographical or original references and phrases.  The record’s second single, “Black Cherry”  uses a couple of signifiers, James Brown sneakers and a Michael Caine movie line, but it mostly lets Zilla make his own lane, citing the importance of his “root beer haircut” and remembering a particularly noteworthy dance move referred to as the rattlesnake.  These seem like personal touches and they let the record’s narrative voice breathe, creating a fully-formed, likable character.  “Vaguely Jamaican” is another track with its priorities in order, cobbling together the story of the pursuit of a foreign waitress with a whole lot of food descriptions and laid-back “not a player” girl advice that doubles as the voice of experience.

Creativity thrives on other tracks:  “New Years Eve 2003 (That Dream)” is a mash-up of science fiction concepts that manages to stay fresh, simply because the narrator is so blasé.  He seems just as chilled-out faced with rescuing a damsel from anonymous torturers as he did sitting in the diner on the other tracks.  “Apparently, they broke my fingers, when I awoke,” he raps, bemused, surely, but not particularly worried, as shown by the jokey yelp that follows the observation.  Unsurprisingly, he manages to save the girl, as his hands transform and he screams like Rasheed Wallace (which is awesome).  A cover of D’Angelo’s “Devil’s Pie” is a well-executed twist on an already excellent track, bolstered by Zilla’s gruff matter-of-factness and a funky looped beat provided by Small Pro.  And “Something Good” makes use of an engaging interlude to amp up the energy of the record, using a kickass sample and a timely Curly Castro feature to keep things moving.

Zilla only runs intro trouble when he stresses the concept too hard, letting his multifarious references do his work for him.  The aforementioned thesis, “Crème de Menthe,” anticipates this problem; it’s got an awesome brassy beat but instead of getting any kind of narrative rap, we get a bunch of signifiers that inform us of the vibe we’re going to get on the rest of the record.  The list includes tailored pants, Risky Business, single woman, dollar cabs, whiskey maids, bottle cans, shoeshine man, the leather holster, the dollar razor and concludes its first verse with “all the standards.”   

When these ideas are applied to fuller songs, the ideas can start to sound standard, and unoriginal, utilizing overused visual and stylistic cues to cut corners on what would otherwise be a fully realized picture. “Full Spectrum” lists off colors and possessions in a song becomes a B-side to a concept that’s already been executed with Elzhi’s “Colors.”  Has-Lo’s guest spot relieves some of the monotony but the track still seems like a retread of an already gimmicky song. And “Michael Caine Glasses” gets caught in the trap set by its title, using cans of PBR, the word “goonies,”  and various mentions of shady spots to remind us of a movie we’ve seen a few too many times.

But these missteps are minor, and only aggravate when held too closely to the light.  For the most part, they glide right along with the rest of the record, the aural embodiment of the most exciting parts of one man’s twenty-somethings that could end up soundtracking the most exciting parts of yours.  Name your own price and cop it here.