Album Review: Estee Nack - Nacksaw Jim Duggan

“Curator” is not a role often needing a credit in the world of music; in fact, before rapper Westside Gunn decided to step back (somewhat) from his own career to take on a larger role in crafting music for his peers and labelmates, such a title was all but absent from the medium. In his role as executive producer on albums like Mach-Hommy’s Pray For Haiti and Rome Streetz’s KISS THE RING, Gunn’s influence and connections undoubtedly worked to shape their sound and structure around his own abstract tenets, yet his presence runs deeper than that of other musical “curators” like Brian Eno or Dr. Dre. To be taken under the wing of Gunn and Griselda Records is to be inducted into an illustrious lineage residing at the intersection of both glamour and grit, and the both is key; Griselda’s presence is to be felt just as strongly at Paris Fashion Week as it is on the backstreets of Buffalo, New York (or Lynn, Massachusetts, in Nack’s case). The sobriquet-loving Estee Nack has been putting in more than his share of work for the past decade, and the implicit cosign that is Nacksaw Jim Duggan is a culmination both befitting and deserved, even if the album itself may not be the universally acclaimed trendsetter Gunn assumed. As with the Peace “Fly” God mixtape that Gunn dropped last year which featured numerous appearance from Nack (and fellow Griselda up-and-comer Stove God Cooks), Nacksaw is an imprecise work of ambition testing the boundaries of what is admissible in terms of both rapping and production, out to prove the significance of Nack’s place in the Griselda roster (and of his Dominican heritage) yet failing to properly reiterate how he reached that level of notoriety in the first place.

One could argue that “curation” tenuously implies a shift of focus towards quality and away from quantity, yet at just over fifty minutes in runtime, Nacksaw is very nearly the longest album in Nack’s catalogue, with a number of its tracks stretched out to the four- or five-minute mark for reasons that must be beyond our feeble non-curated brains. Unlike the aforementioned Rome Streetz record, which bounced from one Conductor Williams beat to another with enough velocity to keep things somewhat fresh, the equally lengthy Nacksaw instead drags out moments like WEMADEHISTORY and the unremarkable 4DEVILHEADZ to nearly five minutes for no discernable reason. (The latter cut wasn’t even on the initial tracklist, inserted post-release to replace MINIMANSIONBARTEL after a beef with its uncredited producer Ewonee exposed just how hollow Gunn’s commitment to his idea of “art” really is; the substitute is arguably the worse of the two, though its greatest crime is extending the resulting album by another minute). Maybe it was Conductor himself who was largely responsible for the shorter tracks on KISS THE RING; the producer’s sole contribution here might ultimately be just a response to online jokes about the incessant repetition of his trademark tag, but at just under three minutes, BONDUCTORWEHAVEAPROBLEM would be one of the record’s most approachable cuts if the sparse beat solely composed of bass strums and the occasional guitar chord wasn’t so half-baked (Nackie Robinson does his best, but it’s not enough to save the final product).

Atop a bed of abrasive horn stings, opener NACKMANCOLETRANE similarly forgoes its percussion in service of a style much more appropriate for Nack’s talents, and though his unpolished flow is constantly fighting to keep pace, the result is still a competent introduction to Nack’s own version of charisma: “They ain’t catch it the first time rhyming, you gotta quote ‘em twice”. The nigh-drumless style that has become increasingly common among the beatmakers in Griselda’s orbit continues to pop up occasionally throughout the album, yet only really finds success on GREENCELOPHANE, built around a brilliant sample of what sounds like ’60s-era psychedelic rock and some of Nack’s best punchlines to date (that Bill Clinton line is too sordid to repeat but too hilarious to not mention) that sadly loses the thread as it progresses due to his less-than-capable singing on the hook. At least Freddie Nackson gets a chance to redeem his crooning on ANGELDIOR, a nod to the Dominican musician of the same name with a half-sung chorus of one memorable bar after another (from “You wouldn’t think I’m fathering rappers in Argentina” to “This shit is booming like Nagasaki and Hiroshima”). Nack’s addictive inflections are just as ingenious as the discordant, atmospheric beat underneath them, the two perfectly married into what ends up being one of the best tracks in the rapper’s (almost too expansive) discography.

Still, the longer track lengths paired with Nack’s innately harsh vocals (and the frequent absence of drums) often leave Nacksaw a more onerous listen than strictly necessary. It’s not until TALCOMMANDO that the rapper’s singular energy starts to resurface, and even then it’s largely owed to a tense, high-strung sample and the steady low end thudding underneath; Nackie Chan’s bars are serviceable but scattered, and the song’s latter half is dedicated to a pointless Westside Gunn aside (unfavourably recalling his entertaining appearance on Mach-Hommy’s The 26th Letter). Fortunately, the next couple tracks are among the album’s most competent (particularly the short, sweet, and ethereal SPACEX), and even Gunn gets a chance to redeem himself through closing out OLDNACKDONALDHADAFARM (and the project as a whole) with a potent verse bridging the gap between fashion and felonies: “Bricks on the scale lookin’ like Hercules/Mytheresa lookin’ like a murder scene/Greg Lauren sweats lookin’ like they had surgery“. For many listeners, however, this uptick will come too little too late; as is sadly the case with many of Estee Nack’s verses themselves, Nacksaw Jim Duggan is a cumbersome, unfocused record that nonetheless stands out not because of any musical fairy dust sprinkled on by Gunn in his role as curator, but as a result of a yet-untapped artistic well at the juncture of his experience and Nack’s unparalleled tenacity. It would be difficult to argue that such a partnership is on track to bear as much fruit as the longstanding one between Nack and fellow Massachusetts rapper al.divino, but if Nacksaw does turn out to be only the first of many full-length Griselda collaborations between New York and Massachusetts, it’s only a matter of time before one such effort delivers on the promise of greatness inherent in (and integral to) the label’s ethos.

6.5/10

Favourite Tracks: ANGELDIOR, SPACEX, OLDNACKDONALDHADAFARM