There’s a lot to be said for Charisma. In a day where anyone can plug a Wal-Mart mic into a laptop and call themselves a rapper, only the most memorable of personas will leave the stain of success on the listening populace. Trick Daddy is one of the few MC’s who will always have the collective consciousness of the streets, billboard hit or not. He withdraws from that earned credit with his mixtape release Dick & Dynamite.
Weighing in at a somewhat sizable 22 tracks, the Dade County Mayor goes the traditional route of sprinkling original works with freestyles over popular songs where he flexes his lyrical muscle. The variety of the mixtape somewhat dilutes it’s collective impact. It offers something for everyone, but perhaps only one group should have been looked out for here: the streets.
On D&D Trick two steps between chest-thumping rhetoric that made him a southern pioneer and a less successful “diamonds and girls” approach. He sounds hungry as ever if not reinvigorated when he firmly plants his flag on the project’s gruff Miami bass soundscape. Over the wondrously ambitious bounce beat of “Wait One Mfn Min”, Trick petitions his ornery guerrilla mentality isn’t a gimmick, warning (that) “since you started shit you gettin it worse”.
Over the “Niggaz In Paris” beat is where he truly shines, delivering the street influenced introspection that’s universally revered and longed for in the genre. It’s as if Trick purposely lured the listeners in with the absurdly catchy bounce then decided to take them to school on “Niggaz in Dade”, where he talks about the dwindling profits and increasing treachery of the drug game, warning “the dope game is done if we don’t tighten up and take this back to the 90s”.
That may be a dubious lament to some, but it’s what Trick Daddy does well, and the listener is better off with him in his comfort zone, as opposed to when he overextends with tracks like “Know How To Treat Her” that’s so trite he might as well use Das Efx wiggedy-wiggedy lyrics within it. It’s not that he doesn’t have the basic concept of how to appeal to the strip clubs, but then again it’s that he has a mere basic concept of radio-friendly records.
Gone are the days of “Shutup”, where he took the most befuddling of choruses nationwide. On the aforementioned as well as “Chevy” you can hear Trick trying to ignite a spark that just might not emit. Charisma will make people listen, but it won’t make people like it, and that’s this project’s fatal flaw. With too many swings and misses, this project definitely doesn’t reach the top of his catalog.
Trick Daddy is at the point of his long career where he should stick to his niche which carries this mixtape. More gritty, resonant music for Liberty City summers and less chasing of hits like a desperate young buck.
