Nelly – Brass Knuckles

• 17th Nov 2008

While the musical world of hip-hop has been booming in recent years, it seems that the quality control has been doing exactly the opposite, the over saturation of a scene resulting in identikit rapper egos and un-inspiring beats.

Now eight years since his debut, Nelly’s latest offering is mildly surprising in the fact that it is passable on first listen. Which in the current climate makes it something of a critical success story.

Further listens hardly elevate my opinion, and if anything actually begins to reveal its flaws, but it does possess a certain charm and is far from being a truly terrible album, with the exceptions being the tracks chosen to lead the album’s promotional duties, singles Party People and Body On Me are the weakest offerings, probably owing to their mimicking of other contemporary ‘big’ hip-hop sounds, in particular the latter’s take-over by the ubiquitous and irritating Akon.

And while rap albums usually trade heavily on their numerous guest stars, Brass Knuckles burgeoning ‘featuring’ list takes the trend to bizarre new levels. The Guests spots on the album actually outweigh the number of tracks on the album (Eighteen separate artists, against fifteen tracks) with Nelly’s crew, St. Lunatics featured on two tracks and puzzlingly Nelly is even listed as featuring on one the tracks. Bar the obligatory bonus track, the only track without any guesting is (the rather appropriately titled) One and Only.

Although the above could easily be levelled as criticism in some cases, this time around it actually strengthens the album, the content of the rhymes or the music are hardly revolutionary but the variation provided by the multiple guest spots keeps the sound of the album from becoming stale or tired and with high profile artists such as Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J, Usher and Public Enemy’s Chuck D, production including Jermaine Dupri and The Neptunes each providing a track, and hip-hop’s natural re-appropriation of its own popular refrains the album actually resembles an all-star mix-tape rather than a solo artist album.

It could do with some of the unnecessary fat trimmed from the 62 minutes running time to make it a leaner and more concise offering, but when an essential hip-hop album is a rarity and most rap albums are in fact thinly veiled filler backing two or three singles, Brass Knuckles is deserving of repeat plays with an album that bucks hip-hop’s tired trend.