Kool Moe Dee
Funke Funke Wisdom
Album Review
Released: 1991
Album Review
As one-third of the death-defying, speed-rhyming Treacherous Three, Kool Moe Dee was one of rap's founding fathers. A decade later he's the last survivor of the first-generation "old school," pressing on after contemporaries like the Sugar Hill Gang and Kurtis Blow have fallen by the wayside. At its best, Funke, Funke Wisdom, Moe's fourth solo album, marks a return to the joyous words-for-words'-sake looseness that powered hip-hop's early classics.
Moe has backed off the sermonizing that characterized his 1989 outing Knowledge Is King – on Wisdom's "Here We Go Again," he explains his intent, noting that "it's hard to rock a party when you're lyrically advanced." He focuses on stripped-down beats, some swung by New Jack producer Teddy Riley, that move his crisp, enunciated delivery to the fore. While there's nothing on Wisdom as obviously stunning as Knowledge's hit single "I Go to Work," there's a consistency and good humor – most notable on the throwback "To the Beat Y'all" – that ultimately make this album more satisfying.
The samples stick pretty close to the usual James Brown/Sly Stone/P-Funk canon, but they remind us why artists return to these same sources again and again. Listen to the funky flexibility of the Sly break used in the anthemic single "Rise 'n' Shine"; Moe, Chuck D. and KRS-One can each bounce his unique rhyme rhythms and styles off this one riff without having to break stride or twist his words to conform to the beat.
The only serious misstep on Funke, Funke Wisdom is "Death Blow," six and a half minutes of the latest in the Kool Moe Dee-L.L. Cool J feud, a rivalry which grew tired long ago. Not only do Moe's words ("You're young and dumb and quick with the tongue, you high-strung bum") contradict the communal message he's trying to convey, they also sound bitter in light of L.L.'s latest pop successes. Otherwise, the lessons on Wisdom are limited to some loopy "metaphysics" (on the propulsive "Poetic Justice," a chorus actually chants, "What goes around comes around") and rather generic pleas for unity and self-improvement. In fact, the strongest statements of what is called "pride" these days would have just been called boasting back when Kool Moe Dee started rapping – and that's still the funkiest wisdom of all. (RS 608/609)
ALAN LIGHT
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