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Hell Rell Album Review: FOR THE HELL OF IT

““I had a LOT of gangsters waiting on this $s$%^, well NO MORE WAITING, I present Rugger Rell……. the BRICKS, the POT, the STOVE, the SCALE….THIS IS FOR THE HELL OF IT!!!” – Hell Rell.

OK……All my peoples tired of “Gangstas” singing love songs and doing duets with Robin Thicke or T-Pain raise your hand!! Well for those who just raised their hand like Benz0 it’s time to get excited cause Hell Rell has FINALLY released one of the most anticipated underground albums of all time with his new release of FOR THE HELL OF IT. Remember the hardcore dayz of NWA? Remember the “Get at Me Dawg!” dayz of DMX? Remember the good ol hardcore insane dayz of “ONYX!!!!!!!!!”? Remember the bone chilling dayz of a young ruthless Mobb Deep? WELL THOSE DAYZ ARE BACK!!!!! Let me introduce y’all to the Dipset member they call “The Cleanup Man”. The man they call the “17 shots kid” aka Rugger Rell. The man known as Durell Mohammed or otherwise known as Hell Rell. Hell Rell’s mission is to “bring gangsta rap back”. Ironic that a NY artist hailing from 175th St. in the Bronx is talking about bringing “gangsta rap” back but it just goes to show how universal hiphop is these days. The South is networking with the East, the East networking with the West, the West networking with the Midwest, the East is Networking with the UK. It’s hard now to peg a region into just one sound. Just try to tie Outkast to what is traditionally known as the Atlanta sound. You can’t do it.

Even T.I. will drop some stuff on you that’s more traditionally NY style than ATL style. It’s all an amalgamation of raw funk these days and it’s an exciting time to be a hiphop fan. As far as NY goes it’s always been interesting for me to see how New York approached the “Gangsta” genre as they bring they’re own spin to it that was different from how an MC Ren or Ice Cube would approach things. So I’m fascinated with how Black Moon, Mobb Deep, 50 Cent and now Hell Rell really tries to take the gangsta genre to different avenues of hardcore. Well these dayz 50 Cent has too big a fan base and bank account to really concentrate all that much in giving us uncut hardcore but that’s where Hell Rell comes in. He’s earned the title as “Hardest Out” by hitting us headz with COUNTLESS hardcore gems on a myriad of underground mixtapes that the average fan reading this article will probably never even here. Listen. NEVER IN MY LIFE have I witnessed an artist release so many great underground songs without releasing a nationally sold album that you could pick up at Best Buy. I mean Remi Martin and 50 Cent had there share of numerous underground hits before blowing up, but Hell Rell “takes the cake”.

I had NO LESS than ONE HUNDRED Hell Rell songs in heavy rotation already before his first official national release finally hit the shelves. That’s right OVER ONE HUNDRED SONGS. And guess what? This guy is like the Bruce Willis of rap as I’VE NEVER HEARD THIS GUY RAP ON A WACK SONG or participate in a wack artistic effort!! Whether it’s co-starring with Cam’Ron on the “Get Em Daddy” remix or him showing off on the MORE THAN MUSIC Dipset album releases, this guy goes for broke on every song. Those immersed in the mix tape circuit need to cop these Hell Rell affiliated mix tapes: STREETS WANNA KNOW, NEW GUN IN TOWN, HELL ON EARTH, GOT THE BLOCKED LOCKED (Hell Rell/JR Writer collaboration), BIRDS OF A FEATHER (40 Cal, Hell Rell, JR Writer collabo), and EAT WITH ME OR EAT A BOX OF BULLETS. The latter three mixtapes just might be the best mixtapes ever made in hiphop with the only competition coming from the non-nationally released WRITER’S BLOCK (JR WRITER) mixtape series, DIPSET VOLUME V (the mixtape that first turned me on to the Dipset movement), and Lil Wayne’s underground mixtape releases. So it was a no brainer that I was gonna cop FOR THE HELL OF IT as Hell Rell doesn’t rap on wack songs. So you can guess what an entire official Hell Rell album would be like. Yep. NOTHING BUT HARDCORE FUNK.

Look this album has only THREE speeds. GO HARD, GO HARDER, AND GET NUTZ WITH IT.

GO HARD!:

In the GO HARD! section the tempo is hardcore but it’s more about HARD TIMES than hardcore lines. The GO HARD tracks are also the softest an artist who just spent 2 years in jail like Hell Rell can get (thankfully). Let’s examine “Deep in Love” which GO’S HARD! despite the title. Sorry to disappoint you ladies but despite the title Rell is “deep in love” not with you but with “money, his set, the streets and his daughter”. So no there won’t be a T-Pain duet coming out anytime soon. This song is hilarious as Hell Rell tells us “I’m Deep In Love with my daughter, she’s one of the reasons I wake up in the morning, I’LL KILL YOU IF YOU COME BETWEEN HER SIMILAC MONEY!!, I’m never going broke, I’m a Diplomat Dummy, I’m DEEP IN LOVE with South Beach in that GT wildin’, Riding up and down Collins and then we hit Mansion, the whole crew fresh, DJ yellin’ Dipset!!!....”. Things get deeper with “You Can Count On Me” as Rell spits “Sold my first drugs in front of 1768 (Weeks Ave), Look at Rell fiends putting Scrilla (money) in his hands, Selling hope to the desperate made me feel like a man, and my POPS?, %&^%!!!, he ain’t want me in the TRAP, but what the &^%$ could he do? He had a monkey on his back (he was smoking), and my poor poor momma, yeah Ms. Ruby, God bless her soul, cause I done made those tears roll down her eyes, me being a gangsta wasn’t in her plans, but Mommy WHAT YOU EXPECT?, it takes a Man to raise a Man..”. “Streets Gonna Love Me” is another ode to the streets with “Life in the Ghetto” rounding out the hardcore ballads.

GO HARDER!!!:

Things heat up in the GO HARDER!!! section. This section supports my claim that “Dipset got the best hiphop beats in the game”. Collectively I’ve heard more FIRE beats coming from the Dipset camp than anywhere else. Keeping that tradition alive easily are “Do it for the Hustlers”, “Always Wanted to be a Gangsta” and “Paperboy”. But those pale in comparison to “Hardest Out”, “Respect Me” and “I’m the $^%)” which all just happen to be collaboration joints featuring Styles P (Lox), Cam’Ron (Dipset leader) and JR Writer (Dipset’s lyrical clean-up man) respectively. The collaboration with Styles P is interesting if only because both Hell Rell and Styles claim to be “The Hardest Out”. Cam’Ron as usual comes through with the peculiar lyrics: “I’m sleeping on the toilet, YEP, I’m TIRED of $*****g [on fools]..”. The chorus though is probably the most noticeable thing as Rell spits “I’m the $*** man, You see all these flies flying around me???”. Now that ‘s a bit too graphic right? Anyway JR Writer shuts things down as usual as everyone knows he’s “Stunting so hard, they call [him] up when Jackie Chan is busy…Hello?”.

GET NUTZ WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

Again Hell Rell is so gangsta he only moves at different speeds of hardcore. Thus it was no surprise that his first single off his first national album would be “Show Off”. “Show Off” is actually a VERY good single that not only is radio playable but HARD TO THE BONE. Unfortunately the Dipset media machine has ALWAYS been inept. No one would even know about Dipset if it wasn’t for Cam’Ron’s earlier success back in the day and the attention Juelz Santana gets with his boyish good lucks that the teenage girls like. I swear to God Dipset’s whole Marketing department needs to get F*&^%$# fired. They’re G-A-R-B-A-G-E. I’m pretty confident I would have made Cam’Ron’s classic PURPLE HAZE album go 5 times platinum if I was in charge of Dipset’s media machine.

And I’m doubly sure that JR Writer, 40 Cal and Hell Rell would be household names already if they put Benz0 in charge of advertising. All the hardcore songs Dipset comes out with really get wasted as only the headz of headz are really up on Dipset’s best kept secrets in JR Writer, 40 Cal and Hell Rell. But I digress. “Show off” has hit potential written all over it but not even MTV Jams has this joint in rotation. I only was able to see the video ON DEMAND after progressing through several layers of musical menus on my TV. Only other place you might see the “Show Off” video is Youtube.com.

That’s pathetic for a crew like Dipset who truly has had the hardest beats and lyrics collectively out of any group currently out there. I recently read a press release about Dipset where they were called the “modern day Wu Tang Clan” which is ironic because I’ve already released articles stating the same dang thing. No crew since Wu Tang has had such artist depth. Moving right along. “I Shall Proceed” ( A nice spin off The Roots’ “I Shall Proceed” track) and “ I Ain’t Playin Wit Em” GET NUTZ WITH IT!!!!!!!!!! but “Where You From” and “You Know What It Is” DEFINITELY need to be locked at the Insane Asylum cause them songs are just BANANAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These latter two songs just happen to also feature other artists as well.

“Where You From” just might feature the BEST beat on the album but ironically features probably the worse Dipset artist in Juelz Santana repping the chorus. But my FAVORITE song on the entire album is “You Know What It Is” featuring T.I’s boy Young Dro. This is a song that represents what I was talking about earlier how you got the South collaborating with the East. They should be pumping this song all around the country as Young Dro let’s us know that he’s “LORD OF THE RINGS, B&^%$ DON’T MAKE ME BRING MY KNUCKLES OUT..” and Hell Rell paints us a HILARIOUS picture of a stripper at the strip club with these words: “If you throw it in his face ma, he’s gonna pay some more, she ain’t never had a job, she ain’t never work before, but her a$$ crazy fat, she know how to work the pole, and she smokes a little purp [weed], but she do it after work, and she party all night, talks ALL DAY on the chirp [phone] and she want me to come scoop her like her name is Haagen Dazs [ice cream]…They still selling Champagne then I’m buying it, the money over here girl, TELL ME WHO YOU SLIDIN’ WITH?!!!....I’m iced out, I’m rimmed up…..”.

Now that’s what I’m f&^%$#@ talking about. GO HARD!!! GO HARDER!!!!, GET STRAIGHT NUTZ WITH IT!!!!!!!! T.I. might have the most balanced album out, Kanye West might have an album containing the best 4 or 5 songs of the year out and Jay-Z might have the best lyrical album out but Hell Rell definitely has the HARDEST ALBUM OUT. Hardcore is here to stay. Others fall off but new blood gladly grabs the hardcore mantle and takes it into even more esoteric hardcore avenues. If you like hardcore rap, Hell Rell is a MUST HAVE. So for those internet savvy youth out there - first BUY the album FOR THE HELL OF IT then cop these songs too that actually are recent underground Hell Rell songs that are either just as good or BETTER songs than on FOR THE HELL OF IT: “Bird, Bird, Bird”, “Eat a Bullet”, “Hush Little Gangsta”, “1-800-RAT-ON-A-G”, “Fix Your Face”, and “Rap Sheet”. GANGSTA RAP IS BACK YA’LL!! HARDCORE RAP IS BACK Y’ALL!!!!! Cop FOR THE HELL OF IT then burn the other hundred underground Hell Rell classics too. Then thank Benz0 later.

Benz0
Contact Benz0: BenzWritings@Hotmail.com