Album Review: Outside the Lines by Shabaam Sahdeeq & Es-K
Thirty years past the open mics, the Brooklyn vet raps his parasite detox, the quiet life, and the boombox his mother bought.
The Lyricist Lounge began in a Tribeca loft and Wetlands even before it became a televised program, and the rappers who blossomed in those environments acquired the ability to rap for an audience that could detect a frail couplet from the back tier. Shabaam Sahdeeq was one such performer, a child of Brooklyn, equipped with Rawkus singles and parts on the Soundbombing tapes; at fifty-two, he is still engaged in it, with Es-K now solely composing the beats. He delivers depictions of the street like a man recounts battles at a barbecue, seated in a lawn chair with a plate upon his knee. The braggadocio is no longer the corner or currency. Today, he survives; he sustains the catalog and mercies discussing his treadmill over other topics.
Upon “Cold Truth,” a single beat wherein Tone Spliff scratches a hook, Shabaam anchors himself to the genre’s core in the opening bar: “I’m the opener, the closer, the alpha and omega.” He then traverses an altered Bronx, a place characterized by iron steeds and towering edifices, and a subway excursion from Medina to New Jerusalem, scribbling his signature with capacious markers. He attaches the decade to the ear that will hear, meticulously cultivating rhymes “when you was home playing with G.I. Joes,” orchestrating the streets while you savored your breakfast cereal. In former days, the local corner shop disseminated principles; currently, the authorities may well have you bedridden, a paradigm he articulates sans nostalgia. By the second stanza, the genre is fifty years old, and he himself is nearing the same milestone, a race of equal standing, pledging to persevere until his eternal repose. “OTL Intro” delves into the more perilous portions of that narrative; Bobbito Garcia acts as host while Shabaam recounts close calls and skirmishes with law enforcement prior to reintegrating society on the day of his release. He comments on a question he continues to field—if he is of Afro-Latino heritage when conversing—and labels his work as “Adult contemporary hip-hop.” Defiance of established boundaries, pushing the boundaries even further, represents the closest he approximates a credo, an effort he condenses to a solitary bar before proceeding.
The hook of “Top Tier” redoes Schoolhouse Rock, and “Conjunction Junction” is turned into a flex that, under Shabaam’s hand, describes life as keeping house, dogs, and cars locked behind the gate to phlegm: “It ain’t about material things, but we straight.” He built his own table, cooks his own food; to rap it, General Steele slides in behind Shabaam and confirms old school cred with some Bucktown tags. These quiet hard priorities are now his centerpiece on “Been There Done That,” which, while in its second, slightly sped up half, rhymes paintings of great artists and vacations with things he’d already do without.
Nursing a cup of Cersei tea in his boxer briefs and under a durag, Shabaam turns “Tea Reflections” into a wellness log, fifty pushups and fifty squats after he gets on his feet, protein in the shake, the parasite cleanse in progress and a target for 103. With a blood pressure monitor on and the stress contained, it is funny (more so than other rappers’ threats), convincing—and more convincing than most—to hear a Brooklyn hardcore MC rhyme off their vitamin schedule. Apollos harmonizes with the quietness of the environment. Queen Herawin arrives, nearly stealing the whole scene, stuffing their mouth lettermen into them while doing the highest of high teas, then chanting ohms under a kimono before chewing lyrics and shaping them into wontons in a run so dense that it relegates Shabaam’s humble health-conscious narrative to that of the plain, straight man.
J-Live arrives with “Soakin’ Up the Vibes” like some weary warrior heading for the Hills, long retired from loving like a samurai, to live the ronin way of centering himself and testing himself against steeped oolong and qigong before declaring, “Knowing that you don’t know what you don’t know.” Shabaam shares the sand with J-Live as his people’s consigliere, but it is the riddler’s still and potent-feeling verse that lingers. When the menace returns with “Scalpels & Forceps,” Shabaam acts out the surgical parable himself, scalpel against his own nape and scarring in keepsakes, building his entire hustle up from the dirt and concrete. Then Ruste Juxx enters to sign a body in blood, and spits the boast that he snuffed him as soon as his eyes met him and never left a trace as he put his name on the stripe. Elsewhere, Sughee Sligh serenades a partner with “My Equality,” and here comes Dynas, yanking the rug with tales of cousins’ smiling and a musket pulled on a nickel-plated burner. Across each, he maintains his place, stoic and disciplined, pursuing permanence while the others bring the love and the threat, and he has nothing left to do but hand it off.
From a Baltimore run out on a Southern road trip, Shabaam is having “Don’t Get Jammed” and “Windows Down” play. The former is his one honest flat-out warning song, BK on a mission to Baltimore, the hook being a flat command to keep your head on a swivel and your face out of your phone, while the second verse backtracks to the star patches sewn over the hole in his sweaters and the Gotham winter in the crisp Timbs. “Windows Down” turns all the way down. He turns it into a Southern travelogue, passing through Charlotte to check on his boy D-Mack, sipping Tennessee whiskey, eating pizza and barbecue with his crew in Georgia, reminding anybody listening that he has been coming to the dirty for thirty years. iLL Dose is hard all around him, fuck-the-police and kill-or-be-killed, while Slim Chance flips it goofy and great, snapping a hundred-hill into your neck and getting full Patrick Swayze on the track. It’s the most relaxed Shabaam gets, a New York City man making moves out for the border and loving the journey.
Spite is the register he overplays. “Forged in Fire” is a heavy reliance on it—the hook has him racing like a live wire from everyone who’d like to see him retire, while “Top Tier” and “OTL Intro” play the same tune. Chordz Cordero at least provides a counterweight, tipping flicks in Zurich and Amsterdam, confessing he hasn’t made millions, but he has kept it solid in the ghettoes and clocked up that he will ultimately just be a matter of discussion. The cornering of “The Underdog” surely defeats the slight chest-beating in a brief spoken word piece. Shabaam drops himself off the top-tier throne altogether, claiming he is dozens of galaxies from the wackest, reminding us all of time after time he was overlooked, tilted and cast aside, ending with the bluest number he ever utters: that he will just keep on keeping on. The revealed doubt beats the bravado convincingly.
When he finally gives you the entire story, in “The Life and Times of S.S,” Shabaam begins from the beginning, born in Kings County Hospital at 3 AM in ‘74 to a Trinidadian father and a Venezuelan mother, raised in the Vanderveer projects until the moving vans arrived. The nineties found him in a ruthless Jersey City, while his mother traveled back and forth to Manhattan, he learned to maintain composure amongst derelict buildings and stray dogs. She bought him the boombox. He saw a man killed in Wilkinson Park where they blazed crills, moved to Teaneck halfway through high school, then took a turn back to the mecca, pitch at Wetlands open mics and R&R where he had spray cans, rhyme books, and an occasional box cutter in his bag. The gigs arrived through Chuck Rock and Nick Wiz, the world tour came and went until he decided he was sick of it, then he was trapped in Red Hook, jumping to the G-train to Smith and 9th. Jack begins the story still in debt to you for the rest of it, a life he runs as if it were a movie that was beginning to shoot.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Cold Truth,” “Tea Reflections,” “The Life and Times of S.S”