Album Review: Fortune & Glory by Paul Wall
Paul Wall raps about money the way he always has, but the details have moved to crypto, the election, and cold plunges.
It seems like Paul Wall is one of those rappers who has stayed consistent and never gets the appreciation. It has always been about getting to a more interesting level, and the fact that money and cars are what allow for that better level. The man has just made it out to the boulevard slow enough that the cars beside him are going to notice, and then lets the low-end knock from a block up the way from him, and he maintains the level of even, lazy drawl that he has all along. This drawl is the connection throughout—he has never been someone rapping fast, always maintaining his familiar level of cadence and never pretending that the only reason he is rapping in the first place is for anything else other than getting money and cars, or things that will let him get that. It’s the furniture around this talk that is updated. The hustle references are expected; they include current things like crypto wallets, feelings on election night and intermittency diets. The majority of the beats come from DJ.Fresh, keeping the format stark.
There’s an element to this kind of current, too, as there are lyrics like “I Want it All” on the record where the thought of getting the entire pie instead of just a sliver breaks down into: “I made 50 off of crypto, but I could’ve made 100/That election had me feelin’ kinda funny,” and a few bars later on in the same verse, likening the hustle to a workout while admitting his deficiency: “I’m grindin’ for my gains like CrossFit and it’s workin’/But in my mind, my pockets still hurtin’.” On “All Type of Ways,” he’s order fulfillment like Amazon, and his mouth is iced like” parmesan,” while “Getting Mine” starts with a “glacier cold plunge,” where his left wrist is “showing like Jesse Collins,” indicating his success with cars. He’s always said that same exact stuff about money; these references are just current things that enable it, the app, the ice, the plunge, the crypto wallet.
Before venturing out along the rest of the map, “Gettin Paper, Smokin Major” plants its own two feet in Acres Home, Paul calls his old neighborhood the start of it all, and then charts a path countrywide: Lafayette, Philly, Dallas, Chicago, “a partner from Vallejo, play in Oklahoma,” etc. A few bars in, the cartography takes a personal turn that keeps his pace consistent: “My homie got deported, now he waiting on me at the border.” He raps with the same level and calm, just another stop along his way. He brings that same kind of thinking to “Something for Sale,” through a store—the hook that states: “I got a little bit of this and a whole lot of that/I got a few of those, couple more up in the back.” A darker imagery will slide into the verses a few bars later, though, where he’ll say “Chiefing kale, thinking about my partners in jail,” and the nutrition and the jailed friends are contained within a single breathe.
He’s using brands to describe his achievements on “Top Tier” instead of adjectives; the paint on his car is from House of Colors, and the work was done by Eddie, and the car itself “look like it came out last week,” although it’s a “masterpiece from scratch.” The crowds at the gas station want pictures taken; his trunk is loud and visible from a distance; his boastings are pinned onto objects you can visit. His respect for friends, including “Screwball and my dog, Big Ken” and his respect for cars such as the engine from “Kendall Motors,” both feature as proper nouns on “HT to the TL” in similar fashion to this; by “Elbow Room,” he’s made his colorful train lines across Houston the colors moving along the boulevard: “There go that blue line comin’, they ain’t playin’... I see that orange line candy wet shine, it sparkle/Purple line out here comin’ down, just gettin’ started.” The trains on the map have become a display of his cars driving along the boulevard, where he’s “all civilian traffic like I’m herdin’ cattle.” All of the objects turn into solid, visible nouns whenever he gets into the topic of his vehicles, and the lines all begin to stop bleeding into one another.
Paul raps, “I shoulda died a thousand times... But I survived a thousand times,” on “RIP Old Me”—the only song where the cars and the cash melt away. The narrow escapes become blunt declarations of a “wild boy under dire circumstances” whose mama “was prayin’ for me them late nights” and told him “I was flirtin’ with death, playin’ with life.” He finds the weirdest solace in the hook: “I might not understand that completely/But I know them gunshots wasn’t there, it’s all the BBs.” He talks himself out of the worst version of the story there. The money grab hasn’t entirely lost its grip on his conscience (he still ends the second verse: “I got a few more debts to collect, for sure.”). But the God motif is there.
Outside the car-and-cash narrative, his lyrics are sincere and sometimes old-fashioned. “Love with a Smile” comes across as just that: gratitude and solid advice (“treat people how you wanna be treated”) with a “sharp crease like my boy Parker McCollum,” an artist who labels himself an “always been a giver, I never been a taker.” The “Good News, Bad News” is about betrayal, and his language here becomes uncharacteristically stilted (“I beseech you, don’t bite the hand that feed you”) as he reveals he “thought they were fam, but wasn’t close to a friend by far.” The weak link is the transitional territory; the music has begun to sag, the beats feel too even for the story, and by the time he’s recalling meeting his wife “at the Texas Southern campus at the student center” on “Only Me and You,” the actual meeting has blended into the bass before you could pinpoint it.
The features provide a contrast to his even pocket lacks. Slim Thug and Lil’ Keke heat up “Limitless.” Thug talks “limitless like the pill,” boasts about his new hustle (“I treat them hoes like they owe me now”), and Keke arrives “H-Town legend Don Ke” playing “the coach.” Quiet Money Dot makes a good contribution to “Still True to the Game” with the relatively minor, almost childish boast of a kid who “used to want my doors red.” His family turns out, too: Crys Wall and Baby Doll Wall on “The Hard Work Works” provide an easy moment for Paul’s best line of the night, answering a question he must have fielded a thousand times: “People ask me if I still sell grills/That’s like asking a pharmacy if they still sell pills.”
The most effortless and brightest DJ.Fresh track, “You Can’t See Us,” has him cruising through South Park and stacking cream. He gives Damon a shout-out, catches Aunt Gillette driving past, and casually drops a line from an old rap touchstone: “When I was young, it was all a dream/Now the Cadillac looks so pristine.” He catches himself and flips it back on himself in the next bar: “The car clean, but I’m riding dirty.”
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “RIP Old Me,” “The Hard Work Works,” “Elbow Room”