Album Review: Good Time Boy by Prof
Prof has built eight albums on being the most unhinged man in any room. On this one, he keeps clowning straight through the addiction and the inherited damage without ever switching voices.
Setting fire to the most insane man on the planet at the back of your bill has been the only surefire way to pack a mid-sized Midwest venue for the last twenty years. The very reason why these gigs have turned into regional legends is that they are loaded with mashes, which are so raw that they cannot even be assumed to be porous when translated to digital culture. Prof’s Stophouse lived that out, as the major labels decided early that this particular Jacob Anderson was too odd for them to sign, and was also too unstable to come near to. His writing is as much infused with the smell of kerosene and hairspray as his live performance—like a sexually suggestive cartoon figure, he is so loud that it is almost painful, but the speed of it is way above anything strictly necessary. He is the cleverest guy you’ve ever seen in the pub who just fades into the background until he gives you a feeling that maybe, at some point, you should really ask him, where are you?
Good Time Boy, the eighth album of his, changes the situation: the half-smirk he has on his face might actually be the only thing that matters now. The rooms of songs feel like they are built in the middle of a crowded street, and some people can even get lost in them. The song “Kin (I’m Outside)” allows the sub-bass to expand while the percussion tosses back and forth in call-and-response, thus providing space for the guests to shout without stepping on each other’s shoulders. The song “Dynamite” makes a percussive burst of kick-and-snare into a fun club-friendly hook that sounds so silly it’s cool-it’s this kind of brilliant silliness that has forever been synonymous with Prof. The one that is extremely loud is “Kia Boy,” which is made up of brass stabs, restless drums, and a pummeling low end, the whole thing tearing through space like a death-defying car chase. Made of the compressed low end, the entire thing becomes more synchronized and gets catchier pop-radio-sized choruses that are able to bounce off solid surfaces and return to their origin.
The guest spots have major names in attendance who are like they don’t know what they just found themselves in. 2 Chainz stats his verse in a “Big Dog” way just like a lizard, relaxed and untouchable, blinging like ice “in my cup, in my teeth, in my bezel,” with a chain dragging towards the waistline, each punch line falling a half beat late. E-40 twists “Brrrr” into absurdity, self-proclaiming himself as the “lingo inventor” with a promise to stack money “tall like Jack and the Beanstalk,” and then he walks away from an incomplete thought. Sauce Walka, who rolls in “in a Rolls-Royce” on “Destiny,” is a Houston original who opens waters “like Moses” and takes it to “Supercalifragilistic-drippy-alidocious” across the introduction, so in the character of ironic that he almost does the song’s antagonist.
Monstrous is the main difficulty factor throughout “Dirty Work.” This stripness makes space for a witty response. A distant person inquiring “is informed that there was an AirTag on your whip in 2021”; to the visitor whom he supposedly has. He triumphantly declares that he won his lawsuit against someone with the same kind of bravado as he spends most of “Jewelry Duty,” indicating he will bring back the fun to rap music with hyperbole and probably even a rhyme about an avocado that was only half and whether the block of Parmesan is only a Reggiano. The humor is always cleverly crafted; he lingers to arrange the space and then populates it.
Nonetheless, someone must take on the role of Cassandra. In “A Crawl Through a Low Tide,” Prof is painted as a smiling American monster, fueled by guns, war, and the unwavering watch of children, hurling toward a destination built on a bass line that does not change until the chorus emits so much light that it blinds: “There goes the sun, there goes the sun/We had to do it, it was blinding our children.” On “Big Wheels,” the bass again dominates the stage, but the chorus erupts with backing vocals and a swell of strings while Prof’s comic-register voice attempts to master a sweet song before he says to his partner, “You were born to be a model, Amber” in a cracked voice. The song “Garden of Eden” has the whole album transposed into a curtain of falling piano and multitudes of angels’ voices, up to the point when Prof’s internal talk comes through, trying to sell a smart speaker, and then, he finally touches on his most hopeless line ever: “I see the extinction of experience/We’re all gone and alone, lost in our phones.”
Barely noticeable by the mix of three concluding songs; The jokes are now just dust. The piano is riding on a high, steady beat for “Fighter,” while Prof is remembering a guy who beat him up: “The year was 2020, it was less than ideal/I locked the fuck in.” “Reaching for Fire” is the opposite of cockiness; Prof gazes into the mirror, seeing his father, talks about the struggle of shielding his daughter from the demons he has, and admits, “I got drugs that I just can’t kick,” with the burden of a beat that sounds like it is moving under a thousand pounds. In “Imposter,” he is at the most opens stage, his voice quivering on the hook, “I’m not as strong as I pretend to be,” before directly getting the point across.
Then you have the title track, right smack bang in the middle, which finally pulls out the frowny face to accompany the playful gloom, revealing grinning death and happy pain are different sides of a coin. The anthemic, soaring “Good Time Boy” uses piano keys and a chanty chorus, and while Prof might be wailing his heart out in the clear sense of glee, his lyrical subtext seems desperately seeking help, begging “I’m the luckiest man on earth… Would you mind if I have a good day?” His “Vegas on a Sunday morning” image summarizes the album pretty damn well, and at the end, when he raises his glass saying, “All this bullshit aside, I love you.”
Standout (★★★★½)
Favorite Track(s): “Kia Boy,” “Good Time Boy,” “Imposter,” “Garden of Eden”