Fabolous & DJ Drama – There Is No Competition 2 : The Funeral Service ( Review )
Written by Sermon Donaldson
( www.thesermonsdomain.com )
John Jackson, the artist fans have come to know and love as Fabolous, has quickly become one of the most hated men in the mixtape game, and for good reason. Fans have had to wait an excruciatingly long time for Fabolous to release the next chapter in his DJ Drama assisted series, There is No Competition. This tape was originally scheduled to drop on December 25th but fans must have been naughty this year because instead of the gift of music they got lumps of coal in their stockings. The release date was changed to January, then February and now, in March, this project finally sees the light of day.
This installment of the series has been dubbed The Funeral Service and, according to Fabolous, it marks the beginning of the end for his competition. There Is No Competition starts off like any normal funeral would, with a wake. At Fabolous’ wake for the competition he starts his sermon off by blaming DJ Drama for the for the delays and missed release dates. After a moment of silence for the dearly departed Fabolous goes on a four minute long, punch line spitting frenzy. His punch line heavy verses continue on I’m Raw where he spits attention grabbing lines like “Go to your head like a shot of Vodka /Rock a sick fit call a Doctor partner/you’d think I had a Gucci deal Waka Flocka”.
Fabolous isn’t the only emcee on this feature heavy mixtape who gets to verbally abuse the beats. Young Money thousandaire, Nicki Minaj spit’s a crazy verse, in her trademark, robotic voice on For The Money over the instrumental version of Gucci Man’s single, Lemonade. The posse cut, Funeral Service Music, is one of the stand out tracks on this tape, it’s a laid back track but it hits hard. One of the most disappointing records on this tape has to be Body Bags, the Araab Muzik produced, Cam’ron assisted cut isn’t a complete piece of garbage but it defiantly could have been a lot better.
There are a lot of things wrong with this tape. Fabolous’ beat selecting skills make Nas look like a savant. His poor beat choices leave him with freestyles that sound old and stale. On top of that, one of my least favorite records on this tape, Hard, has two fatal flaws, excessive use of auto-tune and an out of place La the Darkman verse. Freck Billionaire is the only reason I can stomach songs like It’s Going Down and Suicide 2.
When Fabolous sets out to create the next chapter is this series he should think twice about picking his own beats or strongly consider getting someone to A&R the project. The beats on this one really bring down the overall mood, and flow, of the whole tape down a notch. He not only chooses bad beats he also phones some of this verses in. If you’re going to choose sub-par production you better give a hundred and ten percent lyrically, which Fabolous did not. DJ Drama’s flavor was a definite plus, his comedic ad libs always make for quotable lines but that’s not enough to boost the replay value of this tape. By releasing this mixtape the Brooklyn native only proves one thing and that’s that the competition still exists and that he needs more weapons in his arsenal to make them disappear for good.
