“Chicken Noodle Soup” meets the man who pops champagne with singers under the influence of Auto-Tune? It certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, or the most anticipated album of 2009, but if DJ Webstar and Jim Jones [click to read] can prove one thing with their latest album, The Rooftop, it’s that they’re still a dominant force in creating radio hits and club bangers. They also know how to show a lot of love to where they are from, and Harlem is represented from beginning until end on the collaborative effort.
Opening the project with an introduction from Harlem’s own, the noteworthy DJ Brucie B, the album’s title gains some clarity. The Rooftop was an extremely popular venue in Harlem around the 1980s, and it was where people would go to see Brucie B spin records while partaking in some roller skating. Although Webstar is the main deejay behind “The Rooftop,” Brucie B holds down every interlude on the album and acts as a quasi-host throughout the listener’s musical experience. However, this dose of Hip Hop history quickly fast forwards to the present with the track “O.M.G.,” featuring Ricky Blaze. Dropping a few too many Internet acronyms for comfort, including the dreaded “LOL, smiley face,” the obnoxious hook will have the listener jolted away from their trip down Uptown Memory Lane faster than they can say, well, “O.M.G.”
By track three, “She Can Get It,” one realizes that this is an album geared toward women in a club environment. Bass-heavy tracks that will have the booties bouncing from the Canadian to the Mexican border and beyond international lines are paced at that perfect tempo that will have men sneaking up behind the nearest half-decent looking chick they find at the bar. “Uptown,” featuring Rex and Styles P [click to read] has the kind of beat that will make the candy painted-trunks rattle in the South, but still has that mentality and abundance of street and neighborhood shout outs that won’t let a person forget that this is all about the Big Apple. Styles P raps, “come from a place where they like to get money, some move work all night to get money, some got stacks, shoot dice to get money, white Nike airs with the bottom all gummy, wide body kit make the whip look chubby,” a verse that effectively captures the Uptown hustle and penchant for flare.
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“Take You Down” is the first of four actual songs on The Rooftop that is lacking Jim Jones’ presence, and it’s immediately apparent, as it is the song that stands out the most as the R&B and rap hybrid that is for the person who wears the skirt in a relationship. The street references that Jones was bringing to the previous tracks are suddenly snatched away, leaving the listener feeling like they just entered a rehab center owned by Cupid. A slightly raunchy version of Cupid with a taste for adultery, but the flying guy with the arrows nonetheless.
Alongside “Uptown” and radio favorite “Dancin On Me,” a standout on the album comes in the form of “In the Air,” where the Harlem duo link back up with Ricky Blaze for a track that is far more successful than Ricky’s stint on “O.M.G.” A message to the haters, the energetic, synth-heavy beat is paired with Jim Jones lyrics such as “I can feel it, hate is the new love, deep in they veins like they taking a new drug.” Ricky Blaze follows up with the hook that we can all relate to at some point in our lives, stating “I can feel it in the air, those haters over there, they’re watching me but I can’t stop.” However, Ricky Blaze seems to be more of a bad luck charm to The Rooftop than anything, as he makes appearances on the two corniest and most irritating tracks on the album, “O.M.G.” and “Follow Me on Twitter.” By the 15-second mark on the latter track, listeners will be wishing somebody would keep internet access completely off limits to everyone on the song.
If a lyrical masterpiece with Premo-like production tactics, topics to make one’s brain work a little bit, and some scratch hooks is what someone is after, The Rooftop is not for them. But for an alcohol-fueled night on the town, the Webstar and Jim Jones collaboration serves as the perfect chaser to an overpriced shot at the club, possessing the energy that will keep people dancing until last call.
