I had no idea who this cat was, and in most ways I still don’t. I assumed this was a producer’s V/A LP type deal, just farming features with a guest list that included Sadat X, Project Pat and Nature, which definitely caught my attention. Shane Dollar, clearly, is a discerning head, so this was worth a spin.
Pressing play was a surprise from the jump: he also turns out to be a decent rapper, making a deeply personal album about transforming loss & pain. His delivery can be stilted & stiff and his pen game is limited, but he makes up for it by giving some brutally honest testimony & being a genuine everyman. So From The Producer’s Desk should be taken as a love letter to the genre more than an attempt at Illmatic. Mr. Dollar knows his lane.
As a producer, Shane Dollar is a soulful professional. Every track is a full-spectrum, melodic boom-bap sound system workout. This is a cohesive set of songs, smartly sequenced, and the album has a consistently glossy, almost R&B sound. That sound is very Muscle Shoals. His ear is influenced by gospel and blues as much as rap classics, and his low end work takes a wonderfully Dungeon Family approach; inventive but never flashy.
The album is a full course meal with a couple of corny clunkers in the mix. When he goes bombastic and upbeat, his production can get a little Grind Mode Cypher, you feel me? The posse cut “Mash Out” was particularly bad, and “Circus Clowns” delivers as advertised, with a song that pays tribute to all the worst dogshit that Eminem ever made. Fittingly, it is a diss track to other rappers, mostly imaginary.
These might be wrong turns but they’re dead on brand. This is some old dinosaur real rap steez, which is not always pretty! But when this album works, it sounds like some lost masters from 2005. The opening four songs were a rock solid run, the Jojo Pelligrino feature was a heater, and tracks like “Responsibility” and the bonus joint “Up Late” are big, ambitious productions that sound perfect.
There are some downright transcendent moments here, too. The centerpiece is “A Little Longer,” a ballad where opens up about losing his father. It’s his strongest writing on the album and the arrangement is lush & clean, an adult contemporary radio single.
So while I may not be sold on his bars, I have to concede he’s one cold motherfucker in every other department. The aesthetic is retro enough to be dated but the product is on par with anything a major label dropped this year. Shane Dollar knows how to make a proper album, and that is no easy feat. I did not like it but I do respect it, and the craftsmanship is too polished to grant this a merely average score. Four Dickies.
