A snap review of Queens, New York native rapper, Meyhem Lauren's collaborative album with hip-hop veteran producers, DJ Muggs and Madlib, Champagne For Breakfast.
After pitching this review unsuccessfully to Pitchfork, I didn't want it to be wasted, so here it is. All in all, it's around an hour of work, and new territory for me, but I might work on some others in the near future.
You can listen to the album here, and buy it here.
"What happens when you pair an East-coast heavyweight rapper, with two hip-hop producers, both equal in their prodigal, polymathic and persistently groundbreaking creativity as Oxnard-native, Madlib, and Los Angeles legend, DJ Muggs? The result is Champagne For Breakfast, a fifteen-track trifecta of a treat that much like the exquisite dishes referenced by the graffiti artist-turned rapper-turned-YouTube chef, a fine-dining speciality, decidedly complex, an experience to be savoured and well worth the wait.
With a career suffering from a lack of the same quantitative album releases as some of his contemporaries, Lauren has the self-awareness and confidence to not only express this but, to remain unphased by it. ‘I’d rather be overlooked than overrated/Pasta plated/Thirty-month Reggiano grated’— a verse on Szechaun Capital, embodying this sentiment perfectly, along with not one, but a staggering two beat changes from Muggs, each as bold and ambitious as the next. The fine-dining references don’t stop there. Hypnotic head-knocker Fresh Out the Water coneys Mey’s culinary breadth with verses such as ‘Porcini pesto, collabin' with Calabrian peppers/Usually alone, if not, I step with the steppers’ and ‘I comprehend ‘cos I’m The Streets like Mike Skinner/Monkfish ossobucco for tonight's dinner’, saluting both his passion for fancy food and the London-based artist in the process, while Midnight Silk offers: ‘My palette kills more fish than the red tide/fresh nigga, fresh cut in a fresh ride.’
True to form, the features on the album are a family affair— his biological brother and Dr Seuss-esque lyricist, Hologram, making an appearance on the lo-fi track Holographic Rhetoric, while his brother from another mother, and longest continuous collaborator, Action Bronson, serves as Szechaun Capital’s lyrical cherry on the proverbial cake. Yet, the difference, in making these two the only featured artists gives Champagne For Breakfast a lyrical purity, which not only allows Meyhem to shine but allows each beat change, each sample and each obscure reference to both gleam and linger. Tracks such as Midnight Silk and Evolution (the latter smoothly seductive) would arguably not have been as memorable, had they had the presence of another voice, their brief silences amplifying the talent of the producer and artist.
Interestingly, it is indeed evolution which serves as the key driving force in the album's success. Muggs and Madlib present a production interplay, their respective styles complimenting one another near-seamlessly with Meyhem’s choice in beats, both flamboyant, obscure or even drumless, showing that unlike previous albums he is unafraid to experiment, reinvent and push himself as an artist. This is not the fairly serious, tight-belted Meyhem heard on Gems from the Equinox, or the slightly left-field, mellow Mey heard on Piatto D’oro. Instead, this is a well-rounded, ambitious, fearless, violent and at, even silly (‘argan oil lace the hair on my chinny-chin’) emcee who knows himself, and knows himself well. For the first time, the artist is able to express himself fully without boxing himself in or failing to do himself justice.
While the cynic could sideline the album as simply more of the same for the rapper, over a decade on from his days working with producer J Love (i.e. blasé references to fine dining, street violence, fast women, high-end cars etc), to the discerning listener, it becomes apparent very quickly that Meyhem has been laying the foundations for Champagne For Breakfast, for over a decade. The album is the food references of Self Induced Illness and the braggadocio of Silk Pyramids rolled into one, with a dash of Frozen Angels’ arresting street stature. With the only glaring gripe being Madlib himself not seeming the most present or creative on the album, especially compared to his other collaborative offers (i.e. Piñata, Blackmarket Seminar, Madvillain etc) it’s not enough to fully disappoint audiences— much like the track One Of Them Ones, Champagne For Breakfast is indeed one of them ones— an album that will go down as a musical magnum opus within the East Coast rap renaissance."