Devin The Dude Waiting To Inhale Raritan

Waitin' to Inhale Licensed to YouTube by The Orchard Music (on behalf of Rap-A-Lot Records); EMI Music Publishing, UMPG Publishing, AdRev Publishing, CMRRA, Warner Chappell, and 5 Music Rights.

Artist: Devin The Dude Album: Waitin' To Inhale Label: Rap-A-Lot Genre: Rap Bitrate: 171 kbps avg Source: CD (LP) Playtime: 01:07:10 (91 MB) Rls date: 2007-03-14 Store date: 2007-03-20 Tracklist: 1. Boom I 0:58 2.

She Want That Money Feat. Odd Squad 4:52 3. Almighty Dollar 4:09 4.

Hope I Don't Get Sick A Dis 3:49 5. What A Job Feat. Snoop Dogg & Andre 3000 5:32 6. Broccoli & Cheese 3:59 7. Boom II 0:56 8. She Useta Be 4:57 9. Lil' Girl Gone Feat.

Lil Wayne & Bun B 5:15 10.No Longer Needed Here Feat. GT 5:09 11.Just Because 3:45 12.Don't Wanna Be Alone 5:31 13.Somebody Else's Wife 4:17 14.Boom III 0:29 15.Cutcha Up 3:31 16.Nothin' to Roll With 2:03 17.Til It's All Gone Feat. Odd Squad 7:58.

About two thirds of the way through Waitin' to Inhale, the fourth solo album from Houston rapper and perennial underdog Devin the Dude, there's a deeply troubling and perplexing song called 'Just Because'. Lyrically, 'Just Because' isn't far from Eminem's deranged wife-murder fantasy 'Kim'; Devin raps to an ex-lover about all the various ways he wants to humiliate, torture, or kill her. Musically, though, it couldn't be further from Eminem's ominous crashes. Instead, it's a weird parody of dentists'-office adult-contempo, with sterile Kenny G sax-runs and glistening Richard Marx pianos.

Devin raps all his graphic revenge scenarios in a sort of stoned mumble, something akin to the sensitive-thug coo LL Cool J used on 'I Need Love': 'Get a hotel suite 20 stories above/ And chuck you out the window, watch you fly like a dove.' It's a hate song disguised as a love song, and that thin joke doesn't make it any more defensible.

And yet I still want to give Devin the benefit of the doubt. Over his three uniformly great previous albums, Devin has crafted one of the most likeable personas in rap, an unremittingly decent and dependably funny everyloser, rapping about his broken-down vintage Cadillac and his struggles to pay his bills with a soothingly melodic drawl and a wicked instinct for self-deprecation. Devin croons his crass pickup lines over fluttery beds of warm, organic tracks that balance their heavy, shuddering 808s with pianos and flutes and acoustic guitars. The euphorically laid-back funk has a way of dissipating into the air, allowing Devin's sly jokes and forthright introspection to sneak up on you. Devin's no stranger to nasty sex-raps, but more often than not he's the butt of his own jokes or the hapless victim of his drawn-out story-songs. And even at his most reprehensible, he's been shockingly free of venom.

He draws more from ribald storyteller comedians like Richard Pryor and Rudy Ray Moore than from any rapper, and it's hard to stay offended when he plainly refuses to take himself seriously. But on Waitin' to Inhale, the punchlines come a lot less frequently, and so do his comeuppances. On older records, he might've let loose with a line like this one, from album opener 'She Want That Money': 'Bitch, you crazy; go wipe that cum out your nose/ Cuz you nothing but a money-hungry crumb-snatching ho'-- but he would've ended the song lying in a puddle of his own blood after the girl's brother paid him a visit.

Now the other shoe never quite drops, and sometimes it should: On 'Cutcha Up', he raps about wanting to fuck an underage girl. 'Hope I Don't Get Sick-A-This' is a rough-sex memoir, something that would sound a whole lot natural coming from Lil Wayne or 8Ball or Redman.

Those guys all have tough, commanding vocal presences; Devin delivers his lyrics in a calm, reasonable tone that somehow makes all his talk that much more disturbing. On the evidence of a few later tracks, Waitin' to Inhale could be Devin's breakup album. 'No Longer Needed Here' is a just-got-dumped lament, bitter but nuanced: 'Go find that fountain of youth, that fantasy life/ Where you don't have to work on it to make it right.' On 'Don't Wanna Be Alone', Devin eschews rapping for singing, crooning needy girl-don't-leave-me stuff.

Yu gi oh the duelist of the roses ps2 iso zone. Right next to each other, those two songs would add up to a powerful picture of romantic desperation, but 'Just Because' comes right in between them and seriously compromises the effects of both. So maybe Devin is turning his personal anguish into angry music; he certainly wouldn't be the first. I'd prefer to think that his songs are more about misogyny than reflections of it.

Devin's an avowed fan of 70s soft-rock, particularly James Taylor, and that guy certainly didn't blanch at portraying himself as an enormous asshole. Maybe Waitin' to Inhale finds John Updike's influence finally trickling down to Houston rap via Taylor, a development almost as potentially interesting as Lil Wayne's current sentimental-absurdist Kurt Vonnegut phase. But maybe I'm squirming around for excuses for Devin because I like him so much, so consider my recommendation to be a vote of confidence, but be prepared to get potentially grossed out if you delve into this album. The number at the top of this page reflects a couple of other things, too: For one, this album is as musically pretty as anything Devin's ever done.