FA-BO...LO-US

Fabolous: The Walking Dilemma
written by Just K

Aside from Joey Jumpoff, I’d have to say that Fabolous is my favorite mixtape artist. Though you won’t hear a world of emotion in Fab’s voice, please believe (it, believe it please) the guy’s got a way with words and a way with flows. His ability to put together multi-syllable rhymes is just absurd; ain’t too many dudes that can rhyme whole lines. And don’t even talk to me about punchlines - “You won’t even raise the heat if your chilly motherf***er.” Furthermore, I dare you to name a posse joint that Fabolous got smashed on. Probably not going to happen. Hell, he probably smashed one of your favorite artists at some point in his career. Lose the gun/drug/braggadocio talk specialist is arguably one of the sickest rhymes sayers.

So it’s kind of crazy to me that every time I hear Fabolous on the radio it’s for songs like “Into You,” “Baby,” “Trade it All” or something else that’s the equivalent of a Color Me Badd song. What gives?

You. Yeah, you. The one reading this post right now. You’ve got a job, right? If you were doing things at your job one way, and someone told you you’d make much more money doing things another way, would you change methods? Would you adjust your strategy? What if you could make more money by putting in less effort? Uh-huh. Yep.

Make no mistake about it folks. Rapping is an MC’s J-O-B. This is how they make money. Sure, doing it for the love of the art form is all fine and dandy, but when that paycheck comes up slim it probably makes an MC reevaluate his approach to the art. I personally loved “Breathe” by Fabolous. I thought it was the best single he ever released. Moreover, I thought it was the best representation of the real Fabolous that we’ve heard on countless mixtapes. Imagine my shock when I heard Fabolous himself in an interview say that “Breathe,” in terms of radio spins, was one of his worst performing singles. Sure it played on “urban” stations, but it never became a crossover hit that reached different demographics. You couldn’t dance to it. Actually, if the song came on in the club, that’s when you’d see the dudes in the back of the club that still had their winter coats on maneuver to the middle of the dance floor and rap along word-for-word while everyone else just sat around. The album with “Breathe” did worse than all of his previous releases. In the end, at least for Fabolous’s pockets, “Breathe” was nothing more than a good rap song.

And there we have it. Fabolous becomes a walking representation of an artist’s dilemma. Do you put the work in to come up with the most creative and witty rhymes possible? Or should you come up with rhymes that are easy to rap along to that will guarantee money? Based on his last big single (you know, the one featuring Ne-Yo) I think he’s made a decision, but can you really blame him?