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Hard to believe it's been over two years since Proof died in what seems to have been a real life reenactment of "When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong." As a celebration of what would have been his 35th birthday, Proof's label Iron Fist Records has put out a mixtape, Big Proof: Mayor of Detroit, of unreleased material for free. You can find a link to download the mixtape, as well as listen to all of the songs online, over at Rap Basement.
It's great to hear some new material from Proof - an emcee who, I'm convinced, would have been held in much higher regard by hip hop heads if not for his association with D12 - but unfortunately the production on these unreleased tracks doesn't match the same level of energy that he brings on the mic, and it's hard not to listen to many of the songs on this tape without taking into consideration the manner in which Proof's life came to an abrupt end, killed as he was during an alcohol-fueled shoot out after arguing over a pool game. There are several interludes celebrating Proof as the centerpiece of Detroit's hip hop scene, which serve as a nice enough memorial to his career, but mixed in are songs like Bust Shots and Ride Out, where Proof spits the kind of gratuitously violent lyrics ("Disorderly Thugs get the Slug Embroidery") that leave you questioning whether he died in some sort of misguided attempt to live up to the gangster image that he had created for himself. The lyrics come off as little more than a glorification of the actions that led to his death, without offering the kind of awareness of his own vulnerability to the violence (and, to some extent, the prediction of his actual death) that made Tupac's, and some of Proof's own, posthumously released work so compelling.
That being said, there are a handful of nice tracks on this mixtape that showcase the lyrical talent that earned Proof his legendary status in Detroit. It's just too bad that, after coming to the end of the tape, the listener is more likely to be left questioning the needless waste of life than to be celebrating Proof's career as an emcee. To give you a sense of what I'm talking about, here's one of the tracks off of the tape:
Big Proof - Bust Shots
Here, perhaps, is a more fitting tribute to the man:
Big Proof - Clap Wit Me
10/20/2008 07:31:01 PM posted by Fresh