Sometimes as music critics, we care so that you don't have to. When a casual music fan digs any album we praised, we can feel like a good deed was done, even though our 1,000-word article could have been summed up in a phrase such as, "It rocks."
With our job comes responsibility. We can't recklessly throw around phrases like "worst album ever" and not expect to be held to it. Therefore, when I say that "Rock N Roll Gangster" is possibly the worst album I've ever heard, you better believe I mean it this time.
Fieldy, I would have loved to have given you one star, but heavens to Betsy, how can I take you seriously as a rapper when you couldn't even spell "gangsta" right?
It's been said that nature abhors a vacuum. Therefore, if a rap album made by Korn's bassist exists, there must have been a void in the universe that it needed to fill.
While calling this CD a soundtrack, I will try and justify two hours of my life that I'll never get back and figure out what possible purposes this album might have been thought to serve.
1) "Rock N Roll Gangster" really serves as a true sign that rappers are the new rock stars.
Just watch "MTV Cribs" and try to tell me this isn't true. As Sisqo buys up more swimming pools than the hit singles he puts out, Incubus and Papa Roach are showing us their wives' paintings or some Asian religious crap. In fact, the only rock dude who was living it up more than your average investment banker was Tommy Lee, who coincidentally now makes rap music.
In the end, "Rock N Roll Gangster" is about little more than a rich jerk convincing himself that he's an MC by liking drugs, hating cops and people who don't understand him or his fans, and by telling us the only thing he takes lying down is sex.
2) Maybe "Rock N Roll Gangster" is an expansion on the likeable aspect of Korn.
Though his main gig is anointed with rap-rock high priesthood, perhaps it's so hard to believe that this album exists because Fieldy never rhymed on any of Korn's four albums. Fieldy's lyrical peer oddly is enough a character in "The Onion" named Herbert Kornfeld (a.k.a. H-Dawg), an accountant who uses outdated rap lingo to sound black. He's funny. Fieldy is not. Yet, when Fieldy rhymes about blowing up frogs in "Child Vigilante," you gotta admit you haven't heard that one yet.
3) Perhaps "Rock N Roll Gangster" is a departure from Korn.
This usually is the reason for most solo outings, and not even the song featuring Korn vocalist Jonathan Davis sounds much like their respective band. The brooding "Just For Now" is perhaps the most tolerable moment on "Rock and Roll Gangster," something that Fieldy's family members could shout along with if Epic actually is willing to let this guy tour solo.
Then again, when "it doesn't sound like Korn" is considered praise, you know you're headed into Vanilla Ice, circa "Mind Blowin'" territory. They're almost soul mates in a way. Both certainly praise marijuana enough, try to emphasize Cypress Hill-esque beats and fail to cross the Insane Clown Posse line of being so bad it merits at least one listen. I think Fieldy even samples the Insane Clown Posse on "Sugar-Coated." Cripes.
4) Could "Rock N Roll Gangster" try itself out as a Chick Magnet?
Unless your name is Flea, if you are a bass player, you stand at the bottom of the groupie food chain. Perhaps "Rock N Roll Gangster" could have been Fieldy's chance to show the ladies that there's more to him than that annoying slap-bass sound that finds its way into pretty much everything he's ever done.
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But his chirp of a voice and piss-poor rapping probably couldn't get enough honeys to fill a canoe, let alone a luxury cruise ship.
This album is all the more pathetic when you consider how out of his way Fieldy had to go to record this disc and the fact he could probably retire tomorrow.
5) "Rock N Roll Gangster" as an emblem of American perseverance?
If the Taliban had truly defeated us, would people still get up in the morning to make sure this CD happened? Like "Kung Pow," this album is indicative of the never give-up and sometimes never-think-things-through attitude of entertainment poobahs in the midst of a flagging economy. In a more accurate way, these made-while-drunk, remembered-when-sobered awful jokes somehow made it through the cracks, wasted more money than the annual GDP of Bangladesh and gave the Supreme Court a reason to ban studios that can fit in a tour bus. Like Garfield once said, "It's amazing what people would rather have than money."
6) "Rock N Roll Gangster" is a devious socio-economic experiment.
I'd say this is the winner.
If this album sells, combined with the success of Davis' bro's band Adema, it will prove that Korn fans are getting way too much allowance to justify them relating to such misery-inducing music.
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