Max B was only on the music scene for a brief four-year period in the late 2000s, but he had a meteoric impact.
In 1997, one year after the passing of Tupac and the same year as the killing of Notorious B.I.G., Max B went to jail, and would serve an eight year sentence on robbery charges. When he emerged in 2005, he began recording with fellow Harlemites the Diplomats, giving a grungy mystique to Cam'ron's Jay-Z diss "You Gotta Love It" and becoming a member of Jim Jones's ByrdGang, with local luminaries Stack Bundles and Mel Matrix.
Soon after writing Jones's super-awesome megasmash "We Fly High (Ballin')," Max embarked on a solo career—one that gained momentum, oddy, after a falling-out with Jones.
He created "The Wave"—a catchphrase, a movement, and a distinct aesthetic of catchy, melodic, lo-fi rap music—and released a flurry of mixtapes and singles. He built buzz by hopping on unexpected instrumentals and reinventing them in his own distinctive style, as well as recording originals, delivering his gorgeous, melodic hooks with a laid-back nonchalance.
And then it all came to a halt: in 2009, the rapper was sentenced to 75 years in prison for his alleged role in a New Jersey robbery that turned fatal. He later struck an aggravated manslaughter plea deal that reduced his sentence. And on November 9, after serving 15 years, Max B was released, greeting a jubilant French Montana in the process.
Over the years he’s been away, Max has become an undersung folk hero—a true if you know, you know cult figure—despite co-signs from Kanye West and, more recently, Supreme.
For this list, we could’ve easily made it 50 songs long—apologies to “Eye for an Eye,” “Situations,” “Live Comfortable,” and many, many more—tracks packed with rapid-fire lyrics that swung between humor and humanity, delivered with effortless, gritty panache. We also steered clear of projects he worked on while in prison, including Wave Gods with French Montana and his debut EP House Money.
So without further ado, here is the newbie's introduction to the Wavy One: The 25 Best Max B Songs.
This story was originally published on July, 18th, 2013.
25.Jim Jones Feat. Max B, "G's Up" (2005)
Album: Harlem: Diary of a Summer
Producer: Pete Rock
And this is where it all begins, with Max's very own "Life's A Bitch" on Jim Jones' second album.
Over a breezy Pete Rock flip of Dionne Warwick's "I Think You Need Love," Jones let his protege handle the reins in much the same way that Nas let AZ steal the show on that fabled debut 11 years earlier.
Thus "G's Up" feels more like a Max B song featuring Jones rather than vice versa. Max wasn't quite a fully developed persona yet—The Wave was more like a splash in the face at this point. But he made enough enough of an impression to be allowed to write Jones' main single "Summer Wit' Miami" and score a ghostwriting gig for Diddy on Biggie's Duets album. (Unfortunately, that song, "Keep Your Head To The Sky," didn't make the retail tracklist, so it's been even more rarely heard than most Max B songs.) —Marty Macready
24.Max B, "De La Soul" (2007)
Album: Public Domain 2: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Producer: Prince Paul, De La Soul
Max was known for flipping songs both familiar and obscure and reinventing them in his style. Despite the prevalence of soul samples and his New York origins, he seldom relied on boom-bap classicism, preferring instead to put his spin on classic g-funk, R&B, or contemporary pop.
Even on "De La Soul," a beatjack of the group's 1991 classic "Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)," he seems more interested in the pop immediacy and playful retro vibe than old-school production textures.
Which is to say, "De La Soul" is one of Max's most joyous numbers, as the rapper jumps into amusing conversations with himself ("'Every ten years n****s like you pop up, you a blast from the past/Your music feel good like waking up, scratching your ass'"), pausing to explain punchlines ("'Who's Mike?' 'He's my older brother,'"), and offering a hint at his devotion to his craft: "I ain't one of them wack n****s to take a lil' day off/Come back, try riding, The Wave sound way off/Practice makes you perfect, it'll pay off." —David Drake
23.Max B Feat. French Montana & Dame Grease, "Goon Music (We Run NY)" (2008)
Album: Goon Music 1.5: The Doomship
Producer: Dame Grease
One of the producers most closely associated with Max B's rise was Dame Grease, who first made his name producing a significant portion of DMX's debut It's Dark and Hell is Hot, an earlier example of a mainstream-unfriendly performer crossing over in a major way. Grease's tracks for Max also epitomized this apparent contradiction: they had a dilapidated, grungy, underground atmosphere, but retained an open, everyman's accessibility.
In this case, Sting's glossy, erudite "Englishman in New York" was swiped and turned into a gritty NY rap anthem. (Considering that song's role in reggae music—think Shinehead's "Jamaican in New York"—this isn't as strange as it might seem at first; Max's approach to mixtapes often had a dancehall-like omnivorousness in repurposing pop music history.)
In this case, Branford Marsalis' saxophone and Sting's sped-up vocals framed French Montana, Dame Grease, and Max B's dusty vocals, culminating in French's Newports-and-Henny chorus: "And you can smell it in my breath when I talk/Goon music, we run New York." —David Drake
22.Max B Feat. Al Pac, "Paperwork" (2008)
Album: Public Domain 3: Domain Pain
Producer: Dame Grease
One of the more intensely autobiographical songs in Max's catalog, the song seemed to serve an almost therapeutic purpose. The first verse catalogs Max's troubles with the law ("Fuckin' murder cops trying to tie me to the telly room/Lights been very blue since the incident") while the second is primarily flexing, likely in reference to his beef with Jim Jones: "Got him runnin' round scared, trembling/Send them in, get you for your emblem."
But even as the song seems to serve as a release valve for the real stress he was confronting from the law and his former sponsor, and he addresses the very factors that would become his undoing, the song serves as an assertion of his coolness under pressure: "Shit don't really matter though." —David Drake
21.Max B, "Sexy Love" (2008)
Album: Million Dollar Baby 2
Producer: 9th Wonder/Matthew Knowles
Max would repurpose songs from across the spectrum, treating iconic West Coast anthems like "Can't C Me" (for "Smoking") to soul classics ("I Warned You") as rhythm tracks that existed purely for his benefit.
One of his strengths was to find an off-beat or slept-on production for this. Consider his flip of Jermaine Dupri album cut "Hate Blood" or his incredible take on Tony Yayo's "Curious." Perhaps his most well-known effort in this lane was "Sexy Love," a borderline-ironic R&B track in the vein of Biggie's "Playa Hater" which transformed a 9th Wonder-produced Destiny's Child album track into a completely new song and fan favorite. —David Drake
20.Max B, "Tattoos on Her Ass" (2008)
Album: Vigilante Season
Producer: Dame Grease
"Tattoos on Her Ass" is in the Max B pantheon not just for its unique Dame Grease production, with its hammering, double-time distortion, or its unforgettable chorus ("How'd Jimmy let the game slip through his hands?"). This was the moment when it became apparent that Max had his sights set high.
He wasn't just dissing Jones and bragging about sexual encounters with the rapper's girlfriend ("Chrissy touched it in Miami, while you was doing tracks"), but also sent shots at hip-hop's reigning king at the time, Lil Wayne ("Played with biscuits as a boy, and never tried to shoot myself.") And the beery, slurred delivery gave his high-profile trolling a gleeful tone. —David Drake
19.Max B Feat. Al Pac, "She Touched It" (2008)
Album: Million Dollar Baby 2.5: Da Appetizer
Producer: Alchemist
As has been noted by many prominent Biblical historians, there are eerie parallels between the stories of Judas and Jesus and Jim Jones and Max B—right down to Max and Jesus both sharing identical manes of flowing black hair. It would be a watertight comparison if Jesus had gone on to record a song boasting that Judas' wife had performed oral sex on him behind her husband's back, like Max claimed Jones' girl Chrissy Lampkin had done during one of Byrdgang's trips to Miami.
There are numerous disses towards Jones and Lampkin in the Biggavelz oeuvre, but "She Touched It In Miami" stands as the most stinging due to Max's repurposing of the hook from Jones' "Summer Wit' Miami" single. (A song which Max claims to have composed and ghostwritten.) It's likely due to material like this that Jones still bristles with contempt whenever someone asks him about Max B to this day. —Marty Macready
18.Max B, "Cops Come Runnin'" (2008)
Album: Goon Music 1.5: The Doomship
Producer: Street Scott
Many of Max's best records ended up on obscure mixtapes by other artists. Take Dame Grease's Goon Music 1.5 : The Doomship tape, for instance, which contains three exclusive crucial songs in "Bigga Made Me Cum," "The Greatest," and what is perhaps his finest deep cut, "Cops Come Runnin."
Although "Cops Come Runnin'" was produced by Street Scott, it sounds like Dame Grease decided to remix Schoolly D's "P.S.K" during a particularly wavy night in the studio, and its spaciousness frees Max up to show that he could rap with the best of them.
It's a song that's filled with distinctive lyrical nuggets, but most memorable of all is the "You just a motherfucker I don't wanna be, n***a/Pull over I gotta pee, n***a" non-sequitur. Perhaps the most relatable reality-raps-we-all-go-through-it ever written. —Marty Macready
17.Max B Feat. Styles P & Mel Matrix, "Hawaii 5-0" (2007)
Album: Members Of Byrdgang 2
Producer: Unknown
The original incarnation of Jim Jones' ByrdGang group was a combination of longstanding weedcarriers and mercenary rookies who consolidated into a surprisingly cogent unit.
Each man played his position with a brawny efficiency, modeling his role on great groupmembers from rap's past: Jim was the slick Eazy-E, a central villain letting the other members get their hands dirty. Max B was the Pimp C-ish genius songwriter and hook-singer. Stack Bundles provided musical muscle a la MC Ren on EFIL4ZAGGIN. And Mel Matrix was a reliable henchman with a fine line in disrespectful bars about the fairer sex—in the mold of the Lox's Sheek Louch.
"Hawaii 5-0" from the second M.O.B (Members Of Byrdgang) mixtape is bookended by great verses from guest-rapper Styles P and Mel Matrix. But, in essence, this is a Max B song. It plays to all his strengths as a rapper and features a hook which could melt the Ice Queen of Narnia's heart: "Look at what they did to me/When I was only 11, I had my heater runnin' through the slums/We ain't have no Christmas tree/Mama was gettin' high, the neighborhood people considered us bums." —Marty Macready
16.Max B, "Blow Me A Dub (Remix)" (2008)
Album: Public Domain 3
Producer: Young Los
Top 3 reasons why the "Blow Me A Dub (Remix)" bodies the original:
1. The original only has one majorly memorable lyric with the "come catch the birdy/I'm Tom Brady, you a Testaverde" line, whereas the remix is a smorgasbord of Biggavelz quotables from the "contemplating about my trip to the Bahamas as I spin through my condo in my Calvin Klein pajamas" to the "comfort/cum squirts/gun work" rhyme pattern to the bit where he refers to himself as "the waveman" and paints himself as a modern day Gotham superhero.
2. Max B is one of the few rappers who can rap about weed and make it sound as glamorous and sexy as chinking glasses with supermodels in St. Tropez, rather than an activity you do sitting alone on your couch in your underwear watching Rugrats re-runs.
3. The "Blow Me A Dub" remix is special because it's an entirely different song to the original (new beat, lyrics, and hook) which leaves the previous version in the dust. —Marty Macready
15.Max B Feat. Mel Matrix & Stack Bundles, "Refreshing" (2006)
Album: M.O.B. Members Of Byrdgang
Producer: Unknown
At first glance, "Refreshing" sounds like a melodic, effervescent summerjam, a cold splash of musical water on a hot day.
On closer inspection, the track is much darker than it initially seems, weaving together pained, confessional real talk from Mel Matrix, Stack Bundles, and Max ("Moms came to cop and I sold her drugs") with the redemptive power of music and success.
It also serves as a progenitor for the amorphous, low-fi "wavey" sound Max would mine further in his subsequent solo career, relative to the harder sounds on the rest of M.O.B. Members of Byrdgang. Perhaps the reason it resonates so effectively is because Max's hook doesn't have a simplistic overcoming-the-struggle storyline. It instead recognizes that the joy of their success is almost certainly temporary: "I hope these trees don't get us arrested." —David Drake
14.Max B, "Porno Muzik" (2009)
Album: Public Domain 6: Walking The Plank
Producer: Young Los
As you'd expect from a rapper who splurged most of his earnings on having sex with porn star Roxy Reynolds in 5 Star hotel rooms instead of hiring a decent attorney, Max B was a dab hand at explicit sex rap.
These were not the formulaic XXX-rated sex jams of the average rapper, the kind that make you feel as though you're listening to a horny teenage boy talk about breasts feeling like "bags of sand."
Max was a hopeless romantic who just wanted to make the object of his affection feel like a fairytale princess as he "focused on (their) kitty." His attention to detail in this regard is worthy of the great Italian poet Francesco Petrarca's erotic sonnets to his own muse, Laura. (Petrarca is known as the "Father of Humanism.")
"Porno Muzik" stands out as a unique "Rap & Bullshit" masterpiece among Max's other amorous smut-cuts because it doesn't involve any illicit blowjobs from Jim Jones' wife, and Young Los' alluring production has the feel of the score for an alternate ending of Purple Rain, one where Prince and Apollonia have a threesome with a Mermaid under a purple waterfall. This is what it sounds like when byrds cry. —Marty Macready
13.Max B, "Deez My Streets" (2006)
Album: Public Domain: Million Dollar Baby Radio
Producer: Unknown
Max B's trademarks were melody, songwriting, an ear for pop, and bringing an air of exoticness back to New York rap. But he wasn't above rolling his sleeves up and getting his hands mucky with classic-style New York street bangers—particularly early on in his career, before he'd fully developed his own voice.
Whereas Max's protege/sidekick French Montana stuttered and stammered like Scooby Doo rapping over Lex Luger production during the brazenly trend-hopping trap-music phase of his career, Max had no problem hanging on baroque, southern-inspired tracks like Stack Bundles' mixtape favorite "Cold Rockin' It" and his own solo classic "Deez My Streets."
This is as close as he ever came to a baronial Dipset banger in the vein of "Get 'Em Girls" or "Dipset (Santana's Town)." But perhaps the song's most impressive moment is its final verse, packed with internal rhymes: "N***a said Harlem ain't hot, gon' get popped/N***a our gun talk, cop drops from cocaine rock/Gun spark, glock cocked, burners from Bangkok/Turn your mink to a Hulkamania tank-top." —Marty Macready
12.Max B Feat. Mack Mustard, "Dead Solver" (2009)
Album: Public Domain 6: Walking The Plank
Producer: Dame Grease
Max's Public Domain 6: Walking The Plank mixtape couldn't have gotten off to a better start. If there's a single song in the entire Max B oeuvre which displays all the special things that made him one of Harlem's true greats, it would be "Dead Solver." Dame Grease production, slurred singing, threats of mouthfucking rival New York rappers with pistols and getting their mothers pregnant, Max's maniacal obsession with besmirching Jim Jones (and his insistence that Jones' wife Chrissy Lampkin performed oral sex on him poolside in Miami), and the deep emotional resonance of a simple line like "Bigga' you breakin' up" as it was becoming increasingly obvious that Max would be going to the bing for a very long time indeed.—Marty Macready
11.Max B, "Lip Sang" (2008)
Album: Public Domain 3: Domain Pain
Producer: Cookin' Soul
"Oh this domain pain, so elegant..." began Max B over Cookin' Soul's shimmeringly wavy production. This song is like a proto-"Where Do I Go?" if "Where Do I Go?" was about Max being the Cyrano de Bergerac to Jim Jones's rap game Milli Vanilli.
It's difficult not to feel sympathy for Max's treatment at the hands of Jones, but its also tempting to think that had Jones not discarded Max and attempted to shut his career down, Max would never have gone on such a deliriously vengeful and productive post-split-up run. We'll probably never again see Max and Jim doing the "Ballin'" dance together, looking like a couple of Guido motorcycle enthusiasts with a TJ Maxx discount card, but we should all be thankful for the role each rapper played in the other's career. —Marty Macready
10.Max B, "Quarantine" (2009)
Album: Public Domain 5: Quarantine
Producer: Dame Grease
"I took the streets without no radio/Maxy he's so wavy, yo." One of the final tapes released before Max was sentenced in 2009, Quarantine was an opportunity for Dame Grease to stretch out his production chops.
His deliberate, intricate, layered production on the title track gave Max a three-dimensional canvas to work with, upon which every sound seems to exist in a separate space. "Quarantine"'s disorienting synthesizers and pianos vaguely recalled an era of mid-1980s R&B, but the electro backdrop was shot through with nauseaous claustrophobia.
Max's rapping no longer utilized the behind-the-beat rhythmic swing so evident in much of his other work, instead landing squarely on each beat in even eighths. It's an immersive, surreal variation on The Wave, and shows hints of the direction Max and Dame may have been headed. —David Drake
9.Max B, "Flash Dance" (2007)
Album: Public Domain 2: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Producer: Street Scott
Max's trademark laconic delivery and bulletproof cockiness ("Boss Don Bigavelli was the greatest to ever do it") are in full effect on one of his most empowering anthems. "Flash Dance" opened Public Domain 2, a solo mixtape that predated the beef between Max and Jones and announced the arrival of The Wave.
It is one of the best examples of the seemingly effortless style that gave Max's music its transitive powers: in listening, it's hard not to feel both intoxicated and in complete control, impervious: "Here come the fuzz/Man, fuck the fuzz, I ain't stressin' them niggas, I'm with baby girl gettin' buzzed." —David Drake
8.Pete Rock Feat. Jim Jones & Max B, "We Roll" (2008)
Album: NY's Finest
Producer: Pete Rock
Pete Rock is on record as claiming Max B was one of his favorite rappers. So it's no great stretch to suggest that he put "We Roll" together specifically for the Wavy one. Indeed, the fit is perfect. The sample of Kool & The Gang's "You Don't Have To Change" is as distinctive, fluid and unusual as Max's verse and nearly-unintelligable-but-still-insanely-catchy hook. It's one of those songs you can't imagine was made for anyone else, even though Jim Jones and Pete Rock himself also both laid verses.
Historically, it's an important piece of the Max B story too, since it was the first time anyone other than Dipset weed-carrier fanboys and NY mixtape aficionados were exposed to his dulcet tones. And any song which can make grumpy boom-bap dinosaur dudes (ahem) mumble-rap the "watch your frame pop outta the sunroof like a cinnamon bagel" line to themselves is a no-brainer for any inclusion on any and every Biggavelz list. —Marty Macready
7.Max B Feat. French Montana, "Stake Sause" (2009)
Album: Coke Wave
Producer: J. Cardim
French Montana's true calling in life will always be playing the Muttley to Max B's Dick Dastardly. Whether it was the music they recorded together or their 'hood DVD interviews, clowning Hell Rell and Jim Jones and Chrissy, or the official releases like this one, a reasonable case could be made that they were the best duo New York has had to offer since EPMD—even though their time together can be counted in months rather than years.
Helmed by producer Dame Grease and DJ Whoo Kid, "Stake Sauce," the opening track from the classic Coke Wave mixtape, remains a highlight of Max and French's brief dalliance as their city's most brazen heels. Over a chipmunked-up sample of Marlena Shaw's "Woman Of The Ghetto," the two provided an anthemic statement of intent, which climaxed with French's explanation of the title: "We got the streets, stake sauce/We on top of beef, a whole lotta heat!" —Marty Macready
6.Max B, "Drop That Top" (2007)
Album: Public Domain 2: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Producer: Street Scott
Aside from the obvious traits that made Max's music sound so refreshing (no pun intended), there were subtle aspects to The Wave's musical impact.
Although his producers often used classic soul samples, he was drawn to a more modern production style that gave his work a more universal appeal. This is never more evident than on "Drop That Top," where an R&B sample is compressed into a thin ribbon over heavier drums, and accompanied by louder vocals.
The overall mix seems dilapidated—a perfect match for post-commercial peak New York City, as if the economic largess of the early 2000s major-label scene had crumbled and Max was the unlikely survivor riding a drop through the rubble. "Drop That Top" is extroverted and open, the closest he ever had to a car stereo-friendly summerjam, an unlikely pop song packed with memorable lines: "The hood love me, they give it up/Do it for the kids, I'm an ex-con but they look up to me like I'm biz." —David Drake
5.Max B Feat. Mack Mustard, "All My Life" (2009)
Album: Quarantine
Producer: Dame Grease
"All My Life" features some of Dame Grease's most elaborate production. The beat sloshes unsteadily back and forth, while Max delivers focused rhymes behind a veil of hazy inebriation.
His voice is framed with harmon-muted trumpets, an enervated clarion call, which punctuate steadily rising pianos, bells, and a hypnotic vocal loop. Sounding like a drunken street corner poet, Max's vocals, dulled in smokey rasp, seem completely unimpressed by the magnificent soundscape bubbling around him.
The song makes a low-key, subtle attack, crafting a mood and then letting Max's boasts rise up from within, as if his vocal tone was just a natural part of the beat's shifting textures, while guest Mack Mustard fights through the current. Occasional snatches of humanity cut through the blur, tossed off: "Look at mama, bet she proud of me." —David Drake
4.Max B, "Picture Me Rollin'" (2008)
Album: Public Domain 3: Domain Pain
Producer: Young Los
You'd expect "Picture Me Rollin'" to be Max B's token 2Pac beatjack: Either decent mixtape filler (a la his "Death Around The Corner" homage with French Montana) or a dope interpolation in his own style like "Smoking."
This is precisely why you should never judge a Biggavelz track by its title, because "Picture Me Rollin'" is actually an original Young Los production, and generally considered the highlight of Public Domain 3: Domain Pain.
Never has Max B's youth-icon-with-an-old-soul steez been more apparent than the "Picture Me Rollin'" video, where his Kool-Moe-Dee-circa-The-Treacherous-Three-Kangol-504-flatcap inspired a new generation of Harlem youngsters to start copping them. —Marty Macready
3.Max B, "Why You Do That?" (2007)
Album: 12" single
Producer: Arkatech Beatz
The glimmering soul loop that makes the basis of Max's solo single "Why You Do That?" is the perfect match for what is, lyrically, his finest performance.
The song captures his sense of humor ("It was just like yesterday, when I gave her the penis/She stroked my ego when she called me a musical genius") and places him in the same lineage as Slick Rick. (Find another rapper who so effortlessly converses with himself from the perspective of a woman, as Max does on the chorus here).
The last verse, meanwhile, is like an elevator pitch for his entire persona, describing his move to music ("Now these labels they want me, say I got what it takes/Said I should be in the stu', 'stead of poppin' the eight"), laying out his m.o. ("My topic is the cake/Jewelry bitches and cars, doin' it big with all of my n****s/Poppin' Cris at the bar"), and explaining his motivation ("Only money, music, and family important to me"). You'll never find a more concise and precise articulation of this ever-talanted and charming rapper's appeal. —David Drake
2.Max B, "I Never Wanna Go Back" (2009)
Album: Public Domain 6: Walking The Plank
Producer: Young Los
When Dame Grease was interviewed in XXL magazine about Max's official debut album Vigilante Season, he urged any new Biggavelz converts to go back and listen to the Public Domain 6: Walking The Plank mixtape as the definitive project which fully explains Max's story.
"It's all the blues on there," Grease Says. "All blues—'I think I might go, but I'm here.' It reflects what he's going through. Normal fans can listen and know this is good as shit. But avid listeners will know, 'Oh this n***a is going through something.'"
He has a point, since PD 6 contains the song which best captures the primal scream of a man on the brink of oblivion. "Never Wanna Go Back" laments the prospect of life in prison, recorded the night before the court apperance where he would recieve a 75-year sentence.
New Max music has been released since, but "Never Wanna Go Back" is the ultimate swansong for a rapper departing stage left pursued by the Bergen County D.A, a scorned, junkie ex-girlfriend, a hack lawyer being paid for by Jim Jones, and evidence that was flimsier than a Lil' Kim stage outfit. —Marty Macready
1.Max B, "Where Do I Go (BBQ Music)" (2008)
Album: Bloomberg Series: No Beefin'
Producer: Dame Grease
In the late 2000s, a major changing-of-the-guard was taking place in hip-hop: A new generation of hip-hop rookies (think Drake, Nicki Minaj, J. Cole, Gucci Mane) were emergent.
The era of the superproducer had ended; the new stars found success by adapting to an era where rappers had to be songwriters, too (Drake) or adapt to a new, schizophrenic rap/dance-pop reality (Nicki Minaj). Max B, firmly a full-on songwriter in the most traditional sense, was in the former camp. His Wave was beginning to crest, his relevance increasing by the day. Even if, behind the scenes, those days were numbered.
Despite his young and growing grassroots street following, Max was, in many ways, an old soul. The old-school R&B influences seeped through his music. This was most evident on "Where Do I Go?," a warm, lightly-propulsive, existential reverie produced by Dame Grease. Max channelled Cherelle and Alexander O'Neal for the chorus, his interrogative title giving their song of devotion a wistful sunset ambiance.
All of the ingredients of Max's peculiar magic were here. The song has the feel of encroaching sobriety and lingering intoxication, bleary and melodic. There's a full minute of crooning before Max even starts rapping. The song's tone is bittersweet, almost melancholic vibe seems uniquely suited for the tragedy that would soon befall him. He addresses his real-life drama, venting with a casual insoucience. "N****s try to take me but a n***a bailed out/1.5, the biggest bail-out," Max says at one point, a reference to the $1.5 million dollar bail he obtained by selling the rights to his publishing.
For many, the unbothered reserve of Max's delivery might make it hard to connect with him; certainly, the armor most rappers adapt can make them seem like one-dimensional action figures to those looking in from the outside. And all too often, they really are one-dimensional. But Max's genius came through his songcraft; he was able to suffuse his songs with a nuanced emotional context.
Max's words might speak to particular situations and circumstances, but they would give you little in terms of his emotional state. Instead, Max B was an actor on a stage of his own creation. His matter-of-fact statements about his conflicts with Jones, trouble with the law, and his mother's drug addiction are granted stark power, not through the particular lyrical details, but because the emotional truth of his music hid between rapper and song, a method of implying much deeper emotions through subtle understatement on an unforgettable musical canvas. —David Drake