Silkk the Shocker
Ghetto Fabulous
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Nothing succeeds like excess, and with all quality control eliminated and production sped up to wartime rates, Master P’s No Limit label released a slew of stunningly successful albums, beginning with P’s own late-’97 smash, Ghetto D. In just over a year its bankroll and roster have ballooned to incorporate enough interchangeable No Limit “soldiers” to guard Fort Knox. No Limit’s real estate, sports management, and phone sex divisions are up and running, the Miller-owned Bout It jeans are on the racks, and the label’s cranking out two releases a month.
The latest of these comes from Silkk the Shocker, who, if you don’t count Cali refugee Snoop Dogg, is the label’s current flagship G. (P himself “retired” as a solo artist last year to warm the bench for the Continental Basketball Association’s Fort Wayne Fury.) On 1998’s Charge It 2 da Game, Silkk sounded like your standard-issue gangsta: he glamorized dealing, threatened his foes, tallied his assets. But as it turned out, he wasn’t just your average bloodthirsty, money-hungry thug. He was a bloodthirsty, money-hungry thug determined to explain what made him that way, and his new Made Man is a document of his muddled street-corner sociology, drawled in a 73-minute-long manipulative sob.
But though he comes off like a force of nature, Mystikal eventually reveals a very human dimension, including an expansive and absurd sense of humor that gaudily colors in his cartoonish persona. On 1997’s Unpredictable, he bitterly eulogized his murdered sister. On Ghetto Fabulous, he recounts how he was kicked out of school, and on the Mother’s Day card “Life Ain’t Cool,” as producer P cribs diligently from old Tupac tracks and guest star Silkk’s voice drops to the obligatory sob, Mystikal slips in a few notes of genuine filial affection without ever altering his belligerent bark.
