Album Review: Waxing In Mecca by John Brown the Rapper & Da Beatminerz
For a stretch in 2007, he was the King of the ‘Burbs, a White Rapper Show punchline. Two years in Mickey Factz’s lyricism program later, John Brown turns these beats into a clinic.
For a bit in 2007, King of the ‘Burbs was a nationally syndicated punchline. He placed second on VH1’s (White) Rapper Show through the strength of his catchphrase and a gag about his inability to rap at all. He vanished for most of twenty years and has resurfaced as John Brown. From 2022 to 2024, he’s been working through the rhyme schemes under Mickey Factz’s teaching in his lyricism program until the joke stopped being the main thing. Waxing In Mecca defers judgment to anyone scoring it, while Da Beatminerz give him no room, only dark, blank beats nowhere to hide on.
The conceits appear on the title track where Brown, alongside Smif-N-Wessun, lays the whole structure of rap over the tenets of Islam. The bulk of the structure lies with Tek and Steele, rapping “Breakers pop and lock in circles spinning round the Kaaba” while detailing a Brooklyn scene, “From park jams to Madison Square.” It’s a soaring yet empty idea, an extended metaphor designed to be taken as a scripture. The final lines give way to a sampled movie voice, a New Yorker who’s chided for considering her town the hub of the universe; when she suggests the place is holy, she’s reminded, “Smells like it.” Brown inserts that puncture to the grand notion, yet never permits the doubt to linger, perhaps suggesting stubbornness may be his most valuable characteristic.
On “Rain,” he splits the track into two voices from his past, a grandfather who encourages standing still in storms, and a mother who predicts trouble from a sticking door and a creaking floor: “Pay attention when the door sticks/When the floor creaks, that means a storm’s next.” The subsequent verse aims itself directly at the listener: “In your heart you know that it’s not your parents’ fault.” On “Punk Kid,” he crafts childhood trauma into mosh pits and black flags. The chorus breaks down to “Used to be a us thing, now it’s just fuck you,” and the density of wordplay that reads like an overachieving student proving himself at another venue falls flat. On “Basement 2 Penthouse,” an a cappella piece written during a Factz lecture, he applies the concept of advancement over struggle through construction and rent, shingles and OSHA and corrugated metal walls to build a picture of a man aspiring to a penthouse from a flooding apartment, “Scraping for rent now the space where we spent our days.” The floodwater stays in the verse throughout the entire climb.
The press of other legends never crowds him off the songs they share. Ras Kass turns up on “Stay Inside of My Gate” with the best guest verse here, a front porch narrative of the record biz structured as two guys can only simultaneously make it, then culminating in the sort of pun he’s probably been waiting to unleash forever—“I elevate the cows ‘cause the steaks is high.” Your Old Droog delivers a crisp menace on “Come Thru & Collect,” and Brown comes through on the response with a Robin Hood grab that turns his own name to good use. “Little John seizing arms for the union.” When left to his own devices, he looks to physics. “Living Thing” argues from the perspective of energy conservation, “Energy conservation can’t create it/Can’t destroy it, only change it,” then extrapolates from the concept for composition- solid rocks locked inside a chunk of quartz; prospectors stripping the gold of the gilded era. “Extraordinary” is self definition through compacted schemes and wordplay that works double-duty over a content/content construction about seeking clicks; bars that take a couple of listens.
The density either works as a wall or a reward, depending on how many bars a person has already consumed. The deeper cuts reward a careful listen. “Time Is Getting Shorter” bends a narrative of prison to physics; “My relatives spent time upstate,” one word encompassing sentence and scientific concept, atomic clock and entropy behind the man counting off days that cannot be recovered. “Thoroughfare” is the longest here; three complete verses layering an escalating metaphor over a woman traveling from one end of the city to the other, route after route, until the whole map seems to obnubilate; the whole piece is bookended with an antagonistic elevator skit—a short part that’s probably best overlooked. “Legends of This Whole Shit” pushes the concept to its extreme: O.C. and Rockness Monsta trading bars as Brown proclaims, “I’m the new Anakin,” over a beat that leaves him stranded and without an anchor.
The weight lifts on “Curly Top.” He takes a whole verse to detail barber shop accoutrements: clippers, shears, the finished fade; “Up to your chin from a Caesar.” On “The Body Rock,” he takes an almost-serious nautical come-on, naming yachts and skiffs and teeth on a neckline below deck. “Weapons of Man” switches gears again, absolutely serious about Lockheed and martyrs, about how there is “No such thing as smart bombing,” and brings in that same haunted congregation from the title track again. That’s the scope for a writer who discovered writing on purpose and somewhat late and who has far too much to say to get it all within the boundaries of the record: a man in his basement using his low ceiling to hold every single word he knows.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Rain,” “Basement 2 Penthouse,” “Punk Kid”