Let me address this before I do anything else. Yes, this
album is called Czarface, and yes,
that is a terrible, awful name. I’m willing to bet that Deck, Eso, and 7L
thought this name sounded cool and no one in their respective circles felt like
chiming in to tell them how dumb Czarface
actually sounds.[1]
Get past the name, however, and there’s a lot about this project that’s worth
getting excited about. In spite of the diminishing quality of his solo albums
since 1999’s Uncontrolled Substance,
Inspectah Deck never fell off as a rapper.[2]
Instead, Deck’s weaknesses are in the beat selection and album crafting
departments. Deck’s ear for beats is often terrible and his albums have
accordingly come out disjointed, repetitive, and generic. When he has an
executive producer or someone else guiding the project, as he did on Uncontrolled Substance, he ends up with
a much better collection of beats and a more satisfying album than he does
otherwise. So in spite of Esoteric’s deficiencies as a rapper—one can only have
so much patience for interchangeable verses about how good he is at rapping—Deck
choosing to link up with 7L and Esoteric for an album was a shrewd choice. 7L
is a very good but occasionally generic producer, and Esoteric is much better
at putting together listenable and satisfying albums than Deck is. Deck and 7L
& Esoteric balance out each other’s worst qualities.
