Happy 25th Anniversary to Kool G Rap’s debut solo studio album 4,5,6, originally released September 26, 1995.
Nathaniel “Kool G Rap” Wilson is rightly considered one of the best emcees to ever pick up a microphone, renowned for his skill at spitting lethal rhymes, as well as recording vivid, evocative stories of criminal activity. But even in a discography noted for its examination of human woe, 4,5,6 is particularly dark and melancholy. It stands shoulder to shoulder with what was a groundbreaking slew of releases by the Corona, Queens native up to that point.
As part of the duo Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, he released a pair of groundbreaking albums during the late ’80s and early ’90s, featuring the sharpest lyricism of the time, which influenced countless up-and-coming emcees. Their third album, Live and Let Die (1992), was another solid entry, but one mired in controversy. It got caught in the post-“Cop Killer” furor of the time and was shelved by Warner Bros. Records. Cold Chillin’ Records, Kool G Rap’s longtime label, ended up distributing the album independently, but truthfully, the fracas altered both G Rap and Cold Chillin’s futures irrevocably.
4,5,6 was released at a tumultuous time for nearly all of the parties involved. For one, it’s G-Rap first “solo” album. Though G Rap has credited DJ Polo as the one who brought him into the hip-hop game, after Live and Let Die, he felt the duo was no longer a 50/50 partnership. “I felt it was my time to separate,” G Rap said in Goin’ Off: The Story of the Juice Crew & Cold Chillin’ Records. “I felt it was time to eat off our own plates.”
A dangerous personal situation for G Rap further complicated the recording process. The Queens legend has remained cagey about the details, but he apparently got on the wrong side of “some serious street dudes,” who allegedly put out a contract on his life. This led to him moving around constantly to stay one step ahead of whoever was after him, eventually recording the album is Bearsville, New York, just outside of Woodstock. Shortly after G Rap completed 4,5,6, he moved himself and his family to Arizona, without even telling his friends or his record label his whereabouts.
4,5,6 was the last album of new material released by Cold Chillin’ Records. The legendary label had fallen on increasingly hard times as the ’90s had progressed. They were at the center of the infamous Gilbert O’Sullivan and Biz Markie case, which changed sampling in hip-hop forever. Former cornerstones of the label began to leave or stop releasing music. Cold Chillin’ had remained mostly a Juice Crew centered label since its inception, putting out material from members of the crew and their affiliates. However, they released very little material from artists outside of the stable.
Cold Chillin’ also faced a serious setback when the company lost its distribution deal with Warner Bros., who had put out their albums at the height of their success. They eventually signed another distribution deal with Sony/Epic. Sony ostensibly wanted to sign G Rap and agreed to work with Cold Chillin’ as a means to that end. The partnership between the labels yielded only two albums: Grand Daddy I.U.’s Lead Pipe (1994) and 4,5,6.
Even divorced from all of this context, 4,5,6 is remarkably good album. Kool G Rap is in fine form, remaining especially sharp and evocative when it comes to his storytelling raps. Whereas Live and Let Die seemed cartoonishly violent at times, there’s a palpable pain that permeates much of 4,5,6. Musically, the album has an often somber vibe, making for an ideal backdrop for G Rap’s tales of crime and urban despair. Longtime collaborator (and sometimes DJ) Dr. Butcher produces half the album, DITC’s Buckwild, T-Ray (another infamous crate digger), and Naughty Shorts each contribute a few tracks apiece.
The album begins with the title track, G Rap’s account of a game of cee-lo on a New York City street corner. G Rap quickly establishes that he hasn’t lost a step during the three-year layoff, lending the same amount of detail to describe the particularly contentious dice game as he would describing the crime-ridden streets of New York. G Rap’s attention to detail is remarkable, using slang that’s impenetrable to anyone unaware of the game’s intricacies.
Much like G Rap’s previous albums, swaths of 4,5,6 center on street crime, with the emcee creating winding narratives that lay bare all of the brutal violence that can be omnipresent in the rougher areas of NYC. He assumes the role of a merciless assassin on “Executioner Style.” The song is a chilling look into the psyche of a remorseless killer, unafraid to shoot up a playground in order to eliminate his target. “I'm spitting out the lead, see, to split your fucking head like the Red Sea,” he boasts.
4,5,6 is not a celebration of death, as G Rap recognizes the human cost that comes with the pursuit of a life of crime. On the haunting “Ghetto Knows,” he provides a bird’s eye view of the crime-infested city, where human life becomes meaningless, later explaining how the non-stop barrage of coverage of the carnage can overwhelm him. He ends the track as the hunted rather than the hunter, escaping his own demise at the hands of a bloodthirsty crew.
G Rap gets even more contemplative on “For My Brothaz,” where he laments the loss Puzzle and K-Von, his real-life friends who lost their lives in pursuit of the glory and material gain that selling drugs can provide. He reflects on the potential unrealized as both ended up dead much too long before their time.
Not all of 4,5,6 is a portrait of grim street reality, however. G Rap celebrates his road to success on “Blowin’ Up In the World,” going from “a kid from Corona with a G.E.D. diploma, with more ribs showing than Tony Roma's” to one of the most influential rappers of his time. He chronicles first using extra-legal means to escape poverty, eventually applying his talents to become one of the fiercest emcees the world has ever known.
Whereas most of the album concerns the deadly pitfalls of living a criminal lifestyle, both of the album’s singles celebrate the spoils. “It’s a Shame,” the album’s lead single, shows G Rap basking in his opulence, from his private jet to his diamond-crusted Rolex, with his “down ho, a Foxy Brown ho” Tammy by his side. Aside from a couple of lines about how “it’s a shame what I gotta do to get the money,” the track shies away from what G Rap needed to do to accumulate his material wealth. Both the original song and the Dr. Butcher-produced remix appear on 4,5,6. I personally prefer the remixed version, due to its more menacing feel.
The album’s centerpiece comes with “Fast Life,” G Rap’s team-up with a then young up-and-coming Nas. Back in 1995, the album’s second single was considered a dream collaboration, as Nas acknowledged that G Rap was one of his central influences as an emcee. A little over a year and a half after Illmatic’s release, Nas was still appearing only sparingly on other artists’ projects, so joining the fellow Queens legend suggested it would be a momentous occasion. G Rap has said the he viewed the song as him passing the torch to his younger comrade.
“Fast Life” didn’t quite live up to the enormous hype at the time, but by no fault of either G Rap or Nas. Both emcees are as sharp as expected, reveling in their own prowess as rappers and criminal kingpins. “The cee-lo rollers, money folders, sipping Bolla, holding mad payola,” G Rap boasts. “Slanging that Coke without the cola.” Nas is a bit more introspective in his verse, but still pops, “Cristal like it's my first child, licking shots Holiday style / Rocking Steele sweaters, Wallabee down.”
The production fits the vibe of the lyrics, as Buckwild hooks up a loop of Surface’s “Happy.” Neither emcee was a stranger to rhyming over smoother, R&B-influenced tracks, but I personally had hoped to hear them over more rugged production. The main glaring weakness is the R&B vocalist who pops on the track’s hook and adds nothing to the song. Again, “Fast Life” is not a disappointment by any means, but it falls just short of the high bar that the two emcees had set by then.
G Rap enlists B-1 and Grimm, another pair of upcoming street emcees, on a pair of tracks. The Queens native B-1 was a fixture on the NYC underground scene in the late ’90s, releasing numerous independent 12s. These days Grimm is better known as MF Grimm or GM Grimm, longtime friend of MF DOOM and one of the architects of the Monsta Island Czars crew. A year before 4,5,6 was released, he survived a shooting that left him paralyzed from the waist down.
The three come together first on “Take ’Em To War,” which sounds like some sinister gothic Western shit, as T-Ray samples and re-freaks David Axelrod’s “Divine Image.” G Rap delivers not only his best verse on the album, but also among the best verses of his career, describing in detail him hunting and gunning down an unsuspecting adversary. He raps, ”You got beef? Go get yourself a wreath, because it's murder/ ’Cause I put holes in my beef like fuckin White Castle burgers.”
“Money on My Brain” is the slightly more upbeat track, where the trio describes their plots to make money by any means. It’s a stark yet bouncy entry, as Dr. Butcher samples the keyboard intro to Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” and puts together a stripped-down drum track. All three emcees detail their efforts to escape their neighborhood and live a charmed life.
4,5,6 signaled the end of an era of sorts. Cold Chillin’, once the proud home to the Juice Crew, spent the next couple of years releasing compilations of their greatest hits and “lost” tracks by their artists before folding. G Rap has continued on with his solo career, releasing another eight or so albums, mostly independently. He’s still extremely talented as an emcee, but only rarely is able to secure production that matches his skill on the mic. Although it signified a pivot in everyone career, 4,5,6 is an extremely admirable effort.
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