This business of running a hip hop website is not all fun and games. Despite all the great music I get to analyze, we have a responsibility to give everyone a listen: underground or commercial, good or bad, intelligent or Ruff Ryder. And so when the time comes to review an album like The Opposite of H2O, I must force myself to sit here and collect my thoughts on Drag-On.
This man is a bad, bad musician. You can’t put all the blame on him, though. After all, he is the newcomer on the label, and his mentors aren’t exactly known for their brilliant work. Amazingly, you will be relieved when DMX takes the mic for a few verses on this album. Drag-On’s lyrics are ignorant, his delivery is uninspired, and his flow is the sing-songy crap that will undoubtedly cause adolescent girls to be happy.
Consistent with Ruff Ryders material after DMX’s debut, the beats sound like they have been programmed with a Casio keyboard. Maybe another brand – I don’t know which is being used for sampling these days. Anyhow, the title track is one of these joints, obviously trying to be Ruff Ryders Anthem-esque. “Spit These Bars” is characterized by an annoying loop of god knows what instrument (my guess is a ukelele, but Sayre disagrees), and an atrocious hook. “Niggas Die For Me,” again, employs some sound that could be used to excite the children at a 6 year old’s birthday party (a la hokey pokey). However, this is one of the songs where we get a break from Drag-On’s voice, as DMX’s guest appearance makes it one of the better songs on the album.
Now that we have covered the beats, we can move on to rhymes. Basically, it’s the same old shit. Guns, Drugs, and LOTS OF SEX. Drag-On’s flow and delivery simply don’t excite me. Lyrically, he is weak, but there are lyricists even worse. On “The Way Life Is,” which could be the album’s best song, he spits, “Stop the coke from coming across the borders/ but y’all can’t stop the slaughters/ or the people from starving/ The guns is not standing still, they’re still revolving.” Good message, right? But this is the only song on the album where he actually says something worthwhile. The rest of the time, he rhymes about everything he says is bad in this song. Pure hypocrisy. The chorus says, “People come, people go/ That’s the way life is/ I don’t know what to do/ Guess I’ll just handle it.” Wrong. You don’t just handle it; you do something about it, which Drag-On is too ignorant to realize. Let me quote one more line from “The Way Life Is”: “When I score, I’mma open up my door/ And give to the poor, till they tell me, ‘I don’t even want no more.’” This is on the same album where he has a skit of killing a man in a wheelchair for fun.
“The Way Life Is” shows some potential in Drag-On, but the rest of the album does not AT ALL. “Ladies 2000” and “Here We Go” (f/ Eve) are two more songs with absolutely unbearable hooks. One can only wonder, ‘Who is their target audience here?’ Throw in a few more pointless, offensive skits (one where he gets his dick caught in his zipper.. what the f*** is that?!?), and you have one god-awful album. Only the best songs can even compare to average, uneducated Ruff Ryders material.
-Joe Kostelnik
