Album Review: The Universe Is Watching by Buddy Rockwell
On a solo project he produced end-to-end and raps himself, FAZE.ONE writes brusque, sermonizing advice rap that keeps collapsing into an indictment of the man handing down the advice.
Hip-hop telling us how to live is not an easy sell, and the problem generally lies not in what the writer is telling us, but in his transition from characterizing a person to directing him because a direction has no one in it. FAZE.ONE earned his reputation as a producer, and this time created all beats and rap all verses as Buddy Rockwell—and therefore is in both situations described above, sometimes in one song. A witness is a far more interesting character than an instructor.
The man circles in the darkened kitchen on “The Summit,” reflecting on all those times when he and a woman argued and reconciled, recognizing that each time when she needed him, he put his personal needs ahead of hers. “I talk tough, but yo, I bruise easy,” he spits and adds that she once would read each line of him like a loose leaf, and he writes poems alone now with nobody to judge him. He asks for nothing in return, no rewind and no reset, only that she remembers that he was kind sometimes and that he appeared even disguised. He does that turn many times, and this is what makes him interesting. In “The Difference In Between” he begins on “a dude that keeps receipts inside a shoebox shrine,” proceeds to a rich kid rapping like a street rat, continues to a woman buying a crystal to cure her shame and screaming at a child in the parking lane, and suddenly stops focusing on outside world: “I done sold my sadness/Turned trauma into brands and I marketed my madness.” His verse ends at his own dinner table, where he builds harmony with his family while continuing to drink.
That same man appears older on “Inception,” with wrinkles on his face that children cannot understand and with each wrinkle connected to certain debts. There will be no applause in a fight with yourself, raps he, and no trophies in asking for help. Once he was chasing every high like salvation, and now he wants only good sleep and a normal conversation, and he wants there to be evidence somewhere that broken people can change. In “Forever Young,” the age issue goes in the opposite direction: a man who refuses to be categorized according to his birthday, telling everyone who ordered him to grow up that “They wanna box me in my twenties like a brand.” Two lines in that song look away from him entirely: “I seen grown men lose their life in a loop/The kids talk to God with a nine in the chute.”
On “The Universe Is Watching,” he sits on the curb, watching traffic breathing, trying to understand the patterns behind it, and wonders why every stranger feels somewhat like him: “Same stress in they chest, just a different ID.” Then he transforms those strangers into pieces of a puzzle that we do not understand, and the curb is gone. He performs this trade in almost every hook he ever wrote, and the hooks are the worst writing he does.
On “The Essence” he goes furthest into instructions, respecting doctors who heal and lawyers who defend and every bill written, then says the thing that he came to say: “But I wonder what’s the point if you forget how to feel.” A speech from Dead Poets Society and lines from Whitman’s “O Me! O Life!” appear here, but neither of them can reach the level of the single question about feeling. Everything else goes wide, more than just a title for a LinkedIn thread, more than numbers in a spreadsheet, until he reaches something that a person can walk past, “The art on the wall in your one-room flat.”
There is nobody in “Minds Telescope” either, where he dissects atoms with his thoughts, charts constellations, and deciphers “the scroll that Da Vinci couldn’t finish ‘cause it fractured the soul.” “Going Off Again” operates on the same fuel, rhyming about rhyming, talking in riddles, announcing that lyrics are still killing it. “Clockwork Empire” comes even worse, a thousand emails and zero stress, a calendar cut like a hitman’s log, and one punchline that should have been cut before anyone has heard it: “Focus is sharp like I’m doing lines of coke/Except I’m high on goals, overdosing from the growth.” “Vision” operates with technology and space metaphors, a rocket ship, a neural net, tickets hidden in a solar system, and the man telling this story disappears somewhere halfway through it. The beat changes, and Eligh takes over.
The list on “Sky High” acts on the opposite principle, operating only with highs he can point at: a suede suit and Shaft in the mirror, his granddad’s stories told in a voice like jazz, a fresh box braid, the fear of going onstage and the joy that follows it, the heels on a Harlem queen turning the block into a scene. “Cryptoknight” repeats that trick to someone else, a lunch-break warrior in a nine-to-five cape who “fixes flat tires” and then fixes his pride, and Eligh starts by describing the entire exercise as a thankless tradition that has the honor roll dedicated to honoring his kids. “Second Chances” leaves one thing unexplained, and this is the best moment on the song. Someone at an open mic told him that he has that flame and to keep it real, and then “he was gone in a flash like a scene inside a script.” No explanation given. His simplest line ever lies on “Once In a Lifetime,” where a kid in the back row of class drawing maps of a planet grows into “The only real way that you make it is by making.”
The whole town on “Mental Garden” mutters that the man does not bleed and only talks to the gods. He steps into sunlight like the war has been over, without a twitch in his jaw, dust on his sandals since he comes late on purpose, his pride unsheathed and his heart running faster than the blade in his sleeve. “He doesn’t argue with the riverbed,” and when it is over, “One strike lands clean, silence fills the air instead.” Whatever was in his hand, Buddy Rockwell says it was not the strength and not the rage, only a man out of the way of his own demands. He never explains what the fight was about.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “The Summit,” “The Difference In Between,” “Mental Garden”