Big Dese has to be one of the single funniest motherfuckers that Boston has ever given the world. I have very seldom made it through anything from him without at least one genuine laugh. On “Meteor,” that pudgy bastard got me in the first five bars. Of course, pudgy is unfair: he is simply Sicilian, and those proud genetics come with certain costs.
Dese has been on a prolific run with Mike Martinez, cranking out albums full of upbeat bippers like this. Their chemistry always seems to work, so it’s easy to understand why they’re going crazy in the lab. “Meteor” is a particularly great beat, a crude stomp that would stand out both in a radio show mix and in a packed club. Nailing this kind of touchpad atavism requires far more than ten thousand hours of elbow grease. Youtube is full of guys trying to flip the same formulas. And, mostly, failing.
To be fair to them, though, that’s how humans learn. Big Dese mastered being the rapper he wanted to be a long time back now, a catalog packed to the rafters with hilarious, tightly cut sixteens. The artist he’s become since then is even more interesting: he has evolved into a highly idiosyncratic rhyme writer, but wisely retained the same boisterous and bulletproof East Coast delivery.
It’s usually awkward as hell when established cats change course. It’s not that artists shouldn’t grow, just that deliberate experiments are too contrived to transcend themselves enough to be decent albums. If you can sell your fans demos, that’s something too beautiful to begrudge, like Slug phoning in features while he’s actually asleep. Boston is built different. We will never get a Big Dese whisper rap album over glitchwave limnaltech beats, and the world is better for it.
Like so many dudes with endless jokes, there is a touch of Pagliacci the Clown to this song, which veers from light comedy about work sucking to a closing verse that’s brutally bleak, almost Big Lebowski nihilist. Through sheer force of his pen & personality, he pulls it off and makes it all sound like a natural transition.
This joint is a full Kool Moe Dee report card: this is articulated vocabulary, original creativity. He’s got innovative rhymes that stick to the damn theme and a perfect rap voice for it, too. All that said, I don’t know if I would accuse Big Dese of versatility; he talks black belt shit over boom bap beats and that lane has never deviated much. It will never have to, either. Four Dickies.