Pray to your beloved Jesus Price Superstar

By Jon Juliano
Collegian Staff
February 14, 2007

The late 20th and early 21st centuries were tough years for Sean Price. His label, Duck Down, got dropped from its distribution deal with Priority Records, his group Heltah Skeltah broke up and his entire label and all his friends in the super group Boot Camp Click were struggling. Price was forced back to the streets of New York to hustle for money, sometimes even selling drugs and stolen sidekick phones after his shows.

Unfulfilled by his life on the street, Price went back to the studio to get focused and make a solo album. The end result was Monkey Barz, which critics called the best album of 2005 based on the strength of the lyrics.

Two years after his solo debut, his long awaited follow-up, Jesus Price Superstar, will try and solidify him as a rapper who is capable of standing on his own. Price doesn’t have the same hunger.He doesn’t rap like he did in the early ’90s when Boot Camp Click was new to the scene. The rapper today has a different flow and is more honest. He stands out from most emcees because his personality and charisma glisten through his music.

The title of the album is a good example of that and, furthermore, each song starts with him laughing and joking with the other people in the studio. His rhymes are at times funny and facetious, but at the same time he still keeps his tough credibility.

The reason Price is so charismatic is because he doesn’t try and be anything he isn’t. There is absolutely no substance to this album at all, no underlying messages, nothing that makes you really think. Yet at the same time, he is one of the best lyricists in the scene.

The reason I have problems with mainstream rappers is because they can make an entire album and not have one line of substance. But Price can rap about nothing and make it sound like something. It is hard to understand all his punch lines and double meanings in a handful of listens. You can listen to any song on the album and find something new every time you hear it.

In the song “Like You,” he boasts, “Sean Price is the nicest to write poems/I never say the same thing twice like Mike Jones.”

The different elements of his rhymes are all brought together by soothing soulful beats by the two main producers on the album — 9th Wonder and Khrysis.

It must have been hard for a producer like Khrysis to be on the same album as the legendary 9th Wonder, but he really came through and made one of the best beats on the album. “King Kong” has fast-paced violins which Price rhymes over flawlessly with Rock of Heltah Skeltah doing the chorus.

Other featured lyricists on the album are mostly from Boot Camp, including the veteran Buckshot on the song “Cardiac.” People have been criticizing 9th because he is not living up to critics’ expectations of how good his songs should be, but the beat on “Cardiac” is one of the best ones I have ever heard by him.

There are some low points on the album, but Price is going to make heads turn with Jesus Price Superstar. Hopefully, he will rejuvenate Boot Camp Click, who had a new album come out in 2006. Rumors of a new Buckshot/9th Wonder album and a new Heltah Skeltah album add to the excitement around this group. Rappers and fans need to lace up their boots, fall into line and go through basic training. Boot Camp Click is taking over.

julianoj3@lasalle.edu