Fabolous: Simonized
Rapper Fabolous has taken up residency on your local top 40 station with the smoothly produced but lyrically bumbling Into You featuring Tamia (or Ashanti, depending on single vs. album tendancies of the computer running the station). Today we briefly examine Fabolous' lyrical bumbles and how they fall below the rest of his bling-induced versifiying.
By now, society has become accepting of thug love as just a different kind of love. Because behind every thug with a record contract, there is a rising female singer willing to sing a hook. On Fabolous' latest, we find Tamia on the radio mix — and to the credit of the producer, we find her understated and sliding in and out of the music. Where things fall apart is at a little intersection I like to Yacht and Apricot.
Carly Simon famously began her 1971 You're So Vain with "You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht," and then infamously followed it with "Your hat strategically dipped below one eye / Your scarf it was apricot." A winner of a line, then a loser. But as strong as the rest of the song was, the coupling wasn't too harmful, Robert Christgau noted at the time.
The quality of the Fabolous song is more debatable; your thug milage may vary. But the rapper undoubtedly has a flair for dubious rhyme denouements. "Into You" provides us an opportunity to parse these lyrics with a little thing I like to call Simonizing.
Yacht:
"I wanna be more than a friend to you now…"
Apricot:
"…when they ask, I mention my babygirl in the interviews now."
Yacht:
"Maybe I speak in general now
But girl, imma do whatever just to keep a grin on u now…"
Apricot:
"…where I roll, they wear bikinis in the winter too now
What you think about tan lines on the skin of you now?"
Yacht:
"It�s more than a flashin'
I woulda traded it all in orderly fashion…"
Apricot:
"…my villa in Florida we crashin'
Just off the shore so you can hear when the water be splashin'"
Yacht:
"I don�t wanna trip, but the truth is…"
Apricot:
"…girl, the way you cook a steak
Remind me of them trips to Ruth Chris"
Yacht:
"But ever since, this superwoman has come to my rescue
My winter�s been wonderful, my summer�s been special…"
Apricot:
"…that�s why the same bar while the villa been painted
Just so we can really get acquainted"
So much goes awry when Fabolous attaches bling to his ying. Even the plausible nod to Stevie Wonder's Superwoman is wasted on a villa, a style of building that should be referenced by no one other than the Swiss, skiers and Smoove B.
Smoove would probably love the song, but your similarities to Smoove are your own concern. Both he and Fabolous apparently reserve the right to jump from the reasoned to the sentimentally irrelative. With that in mind, it's worth pointing out here that not all bumbles bounce.
