Buck 65 - This Right Here Is Buck 65

Genre hip hop Publisher V2 Records External Links Official Site V2 Records

There's an irony to the title of this album, because during its entirety, you're kind of left thinking "Just what the fuck is this?" And the answer is difficult to discern. Buck 65 is kind of a rapper, kind of a folk-singer, a spoken word enthusiast, the type of which makes Tom Waits so interesting (or insufferable, depending on your point of view). What is made very clear on this retrospective is this: whatever he does, he does it his way.

Take the song "Centaur" as an example. Over a plucked acoustic guitar, Buck 65 delivers the line, "I'm a man, but I'm built like a horse from the waist down." Somewhere, 50 Cent is wishing he was clever enough to have invented this line, and in his hands the song would become a diatribe about being well endowed. But Buck 65 chooses to tell a story about what it feels like to actually be a centaur, the mythical half-man, half horse creature. Is there talk about sex in this track? More than enough. But this is not a sexy track. This is a song about isolation, diversity and loneliness, and it's this kind of mindset which makes this an album full of interesting stories.

There are lots of compellingly woven tales of painful awkwardness on the disc. Sometimes it's delivered in the first person, such as "Bandits" (the only new track on the album, which has a "Rawhide" feel to it), while other times it's about others. Buck 65 longs for a woman who is trying to break out of a small town in "Cries A Girl," with a chorus of "She tries to hide her scars, her name reminds me of the stars." While definitely coming off as quirky (he thanks God for David Lynch on "B. SC."), it's obvious that Buck 65 is very concerned about creating full blooded, even quirky characters. And while sometimes he falls short of his goals, the attempts are worth the time. And that, right there, is Buck 65.