Consumer Guide Album

Slick Rick: The Ruler's Back [Def Jam/Columbia, 1991]
Cut in a hurry on bail, this widely reviled record will go nowhere, but I hear it as a work of mad avant-garde genius. I'm not kidding--nothing has ever sounded like this. Bass and drums tumbling forward atop submerged hook effects in a trademark groove that never stops, every track checks in fast. And though Rick's bad dreams are almost as full of niggers and bitches as N.W.A's kiddie porn, his quick, preoccupied singsong drawl makes it gratifyingly impossible to pin down the details. In short, it's genuinely surreal, as befits the product of a sick mind. A−