In October 2006, he was shot in the leg outside Sean “Diddy” Combs’s restaurant, Justin’s, allegedly over a chain-snatching that occurred earlier in the evening. I like Fab’s shit.’ ” Soon came another chance to rectify such limp fandom. “I think I’m one of those artists where you don’t hate me, but people aren’t waving the flag like, ‘I fuck with Fab. “There are some artists who make that connection,” he told XXL magazine in 2007. After the album only went gold following two platinum releases, Fabolous brokered a release from his deal with Atlantic Records and was scooped up by then–Def Jam president Jay-Z.įinally, under his hero’s watch, and at last with some acknowledgment of his unknowability, Fab was ready to make his classic. Very little about Street Family, his crew and alleged gang he has been running with for years. Real Talk followed in 2004, spawning “Breathe” and the major-label debut appearance of Young Jeezy, on the tensile “Do the Damn Thing.” That’s about all. He was leading a double life: lover by day, murderer by night. Nearly every DJ Clue tape from 2001 through 2005 could be counted on for one devastating, grab-your-gills Fabolous verse. 2: The Mixtape later that year to sate the many hardcore fans he alienated. But Street Dreams, a modest commercial success in 2003, was so negligible that Fab released the label-authorized More Street Dreams Pt. That 76 such songs exist is no surprise what’s startling is how many panties-based punchlines he can fit into 16 bars. His second album, Street Dreams, is worse, indulging a growing penchant for “the girl track.” In March of this year, blog conglomerate the New Music Cartel released The Fabolous Life, a relentlessly thorough 76-track online mixtape featuring some, if not all, of Fab’s greatest r&b guest appearances. ,” in case you forgot) and rapping about things people who don’t know about rap think are the only things rappers rap about-money, cars, women, clothes, his reputation-the record announced a likable guy saying nothing in wonderfully inventive ways. “Superwoman” begat his debut, Ghetto Fabolous, a half-terrific, half-bland mélange. Fabolous was funny and methodical, but rarely fun. Early on, he sounded like a faithful student of Mase’s slow flow, only without the childish glee. II”: “It’s like I’m under your spell/If feelin’ you is a crime/They gon’ have to put me under the jail,” he rapped in a narcotized but charming flurry of perfectly arranged syllables. He made himself known on Lil’ Mo’s ecstatic “Superwoman Pt. He was pitched as a logical successor to Biggie and Jay-Z, a Brooklyn-born wordsmith aware of the legacy, hungry for the paper. So how did the man so perfectly born John Jackson get so stiff? Born in Bed-Stuy and whisked away from his graduating high school class by the then-budding label head DJ Clue (ah, the ’90s), Fab signed to the mixtape DJ’s Desert Storm imprint. But it’s nothing without Just Blaze’s syncopated stunner of a beat. “Breathe,” from 2005, is one of the six or seven best rap songs of the decade: compact, forceful, clever, mighty.
His lone solo hit that’s entirely his also isn’t. He’s a tough-voiced “hard” to go with an inevitable “soft” counterpart. He is by no means a songwriter-more like an interpreter of hitmaking. His biggest songs-2001’s “Can’t Deny It,” featuring Nate Dogg 2003’s “Can’t Let You Go,” featuring Lil’ Mo and Mike Shorey the glimmering 2007 hit “Make Me Better,” featuring Ne-Yo-are never solo works.
The MC-releasing his fifth album, Loso’s Way, this week-is impossible to dislike, but just as hard to defend. His songs are clinical excursions into the form, if rarely the feeling, of great rap. But even after following him for a decade, it’s easy to wonder: Who is Fabolous? And do we care? It’s hard to believe Fabolous is over 30 years old. A dazzling technician with no original technique. A classic mixtape rapper with no classic mixtapes.
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