eMusic Review 0
Maybe it took an AG, whose '90s hits with Showbiz rocked more than a couple clubs, to write a portrait of New York-lonely as eloquent as "F**k the Club." Like the rest of Everything's Berri, his oddly quiet and melancholic album with producer Ray West, the song is ostensibly sociable and tough, bonding with friends over being turned away for "fatigues and Tims," getting kicked out for weed smoke, or leaving because "20 minutes and they ain't played no hip hop." But it ends with AG home alone and not wanting to go out, the title mantra so whispery it sounds resigned.
After a there-but-for-the-grace-of-Lord Finesse moment with a street dealer (who tells him, "Obama came, world changed, we still the same"), AG leaves the party of "Xenobia" with someone who "made you look twice, and I hit it from the back so long I forgot what she look like" — a macho boast so memorable that it sits with you long enough to begin sounding like depression kidding itself. "I'm numb to the pain," he sing-songs on "Infected," before wondering, on a track mourning a crushingly long list of dead friends, "Why am I still here?"
Everything's Berri is about the… read more »
