We have to start with the fact that LL Cool J is a genre-shaping talent. His acting career and fly casanova demeanor make it hard for hardcore hip hop heads to respect it, but the man had an impact on par with the top .01% of NYC rappers. All-time. Just like his twin brother out West, Ice Cube, efforts to embalm him as a punchline will forever fail. That said, there are some highly fucking questionable choices being made here with “Saturday Night Special,” all of which involve the feature artists.
When you’re mounting a glorious comeback to the game, reminding the world you’re one of the best to ever do it, tagging in Rick Ross and Fat Joe looks like a tactical mistake on paper. The Date Rape Don and Big Pun’s Snack Taster simply don’t share the same pedigree as Cool James, and there is no alternate timeline where it turned out any different. They are not genetically capable of the same greatness, and they both know that, too.
Turns out that’s some high octane motivation. I very much expected to hate this and I was dead wrong, because all three of these old men sound hungry.
But what really sells “Saturday Night Special,” of course, is Q-Tip. I don’t know what kind of Rain Man synaesthesia trip he’s been on since We Got It From Here dropped, but he is channeling something special these days, something different. He was already one of the all-time greats, too. The depth and musicality of his output since then has been a whole other level, and his dynamic, catchy beat here sounds utterly unlike anything else in the industry. Which is funny, because you know damn well a couple thousand studio poachers are trying their hardest to bite the recipe. They can’t.
Speaking of handicaps, I’ve seen a fair few self-professed music journalists talking about this hook as if it were a sample. They really cannot recognize who that is. This is another unwelcome reminder that most human beings, especially in our Modern Primitive Empire, are incapable of actually listening to music. They can hear just fine; what they cannot do is interpret, engage or discern. To them, songs simply exist, like tapwater or electricity or wi-fi, and they either identify with the product or they don’t.
Which is perfectly acceptable: after all, even Jay-Z has no idea what the fuck a flute is. You’re still free to talk about this artform as much as you want. It’s just important for the rest of us to remember that all of your opinions are downstream of your disabilities. Anthony Fantano has a huge audience because most music consumers are even dumber than him. You can’t feed steak to a baby, but Nestle is racking up billions every month selling 3.5 gram jars of Gerber puree.
That’s not a tangent. It’s exactly why “Saturday Night Special” is so great. This is an eminently relatable rap single, hyped-up bottled lightning, a fat line of surprisingly strong cocaine captured in .wav forever, and anyone who listens gets it.
It doesn’t need to be a display of lyrical fitness, it only needs to fit together as a coherent whole. All three rappers did exactly what they needed to here. They stuck to the formula, brought the same energy, and hit every cue the beat demanded of them. The result is an unambiguous hit, and another crown jewel for the Abstract, one of the genre’s most accomplished king-makers. Four Dickies.
