Rating:
  Review Date: July 21, 2007
  Website: Wise Intelligent Website
  Label: Intelligent Muzik

Wise Intelligent “The Talented Timothy Taylor” Album Review
Wise Intelligent’s “The Talented Timothy Taylor” opens up with a peaceful, serene piano intro that rides its way into the first track. Wise uses this track, titled Another Chance @ Life, to reflect on his past and rhyme about what he’d do with his life if could relive it knowing what he knows now. Starting with this song, I could tell this album was going to be different from what many of us had expected.

The Life of Timothy Taylor
Anyone familiar with Wise Intelligent and the Poor Righteous Teachers knows that the group members never really shared themselves with their fans. They proclaimed their beliefs and their intentions, but never explained how these beliefs came to be, what experiences shaped them, or what they were dealing with as individuals. Yet with “The Talented Timothy Taylor,” Wise Intelligent presents himself as a much more emotional, more heartfelt, and more personal emcee. The album immediately gives us a glimpse into the life of Timothy Taylor, and the experiences that helped create Wise Intelligent.

In Another Chance @ Life, Wise talks in a heartwarmingly sincere and inspirational manner about how his life seemed to expire in the projects of New Jersey, how his sister was murdered on the train tracks, and how those experiences made him wish he would have spent more time educating children, teaching men to raise their babies, ridding the world of sin, and living a “little bit closer to God.” In This Is Love, Wise shows a sensitive side by speaking directly to his queen, sharing all the things he loves about her and explaining how that love has helped him grow, learn and maintain in life. And in Passing Tha Time, Wise reminisces on his experiences with his mother, the lessons he learned from her, and how his life “no longer seems exciting” since she passed.

The following verse from that song literally brought a tear to my eye:

Today as I look at my seed I’m driven to put these thoughts to pen/ Until the day that your motherly eyes look into mine again/ I fell in a world of sin so short of the glory of God/ So short of the glory of mom, and this is the story of Wise/ What took so long to come on a record me clearing my heart and my mind out/ Don’t like to put any old rhymes out/ Hip-Hop is still art to some folk/ Fell back in the habit of twisting a cap on a bottle of Blackberry ‘Yun/ Increase my lovers in search of a love that can salvage a wounded son/ I’m not an emotional MC, my heart eludes my sleeve/ It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve discovered a moment to grieve/ I’m not the victim I’ve witnessed love turned against itself/ Mission retrieve yourself and lay the wealth beside your grave/ Ever since the day you passed I fell out of love with writing/ Life no longer seems exciting/ Guess we weren’t supposed to win/ Now all my life is just a matter of passing time/ Until the day that your eyes are looking back into mine/

Storytelling
Other tracks show Wise Intelligent as a poetic witness of events and gifted storyteller. In such instances, Wise demonstrates an uncanny ability to share firsthand accounts of the things he has seen in life, and the lessons he has learned from them.

In Ganja Smugglin, Wise tells the story of a couple who makes a living selling marijuana. Individual verses show the highs and lows of such a lifestyle, from rolling in the dough to having to commit murder to protect your territory and business. In Summer In da JECTS, Wise tells stories that show commonplace events taking place during summertime in the projects, which touch on the overwhelming existence of gangs, drugs, violence and a murderous police presence. In Police Can Do, Wise tells the stories of three women he knew in relation how police terrorize, beat and falsely accuse the people from his community. And in Go With Me, Wise reminisces on how life can go from good times to drugs to criminal activity in the blink of an eye.

The following verse from that track explains some of the trials and tribulations that made Wise Intelligent who he is today:

Yesterday we chased the girls played hide and go get it/ Next day in fifth grade they whispered ‘Ooooh y’all did it?’/ Quickly after that we fell a victim to the come up/ When we finally start to run up in bodegas with the gun up/ See Free was such a hustler, no intent to raise his son up/ Used to hustle till the sun up/ It was hard to keep the pace/ Marijuana couldn’t do it, so the blunts got laced/ And six months later graduated to the base/ That’s when his mother Mrs. Tucker couldn’t look him in his face/ And I never thought to help him caught up in the paper chase/ Cause the ghetto was my daddy, and my mama like cake/ Ten times out of nine I felt my birth was a mistake/ So I dropped out of school at about 7th grade/ Copped a quarter pound of refer and it wasn’t even haze/ Then I mixed embalming fluid with about an ounce of that/ Burned out at fifteen and discovered I could rap/

Spitting Knowledge
But of course my favorite tracks were the ones that provoke thoughts and minds with straight knowledge and wisdom.

Still Black talks about how hard it is being black in America, especially in light of a popular culture that seems to glorify it. Intelligent Wise makes the point that knowledge is attainable to any and all who truly seek it, while Set You Free challenges to listener to look around and see what really matters in an attempt to show the frivolity of materialism and the criminal means many use in their quests for riches. And Cold World is on some straight knowledge shit, allowing Wise to give several statistics and facts about the realities of education and disease in our country.

The following verses give important information regarding the AIDS epidemic, homicide rates, public education, and literacy among the youth:

We reppin’ 49% of all the AIDS cases/ And we ain’t even 15% the population/ From ‘96 to 2000/ People wilin’ in public housing/ Saw homicide rise/ 154% amongst teens/ You can see the red beams/

80% of all black fourth graders read below the grade level in the public school system/ That number mirrors first time black prisoners who are deemed illiterate when they enter penal systems/ Look 3 out of every 4 young black males seen to enter penal systems by the age of 15/ But 1 out of every 10 black male grads go on to enter college and obtain their degree/

Favorite Verses
To me, the two hardest hitting tracks on the album were Youth & Thugs, a track dedicated to young people who society consistently blames for its problems, and A Genocide, which tells the stories of typical people from the inner city who have been caught up in and unjustly blamed for the existence of drugs in our country.

In Youth & Thugs, Wise Intelligent places the blame for crime and violence where it should be, with the oppressors who limit assistance to the underprivileged:

Black leaders, teachers, preachers blaming the youth for self-destructing/ Look let me break down something, you people know little to nothing/ They cutting the social programs, they stopping the aid to the youth/ They moving the jobs to Taiwan, they build more jails than schools/ I’m breaking my bread with the poor folk who feeling that heart of oppression/ My lungs fill up with gun smoke and misguided aggression/ Live on the front page ‘Black Rage Center Stage’/ Rinsing my pain out the barrel of a twelve gauge

And in A Genocide, Wise once again places blame where is deserves to be, commenting on the realities of the “War On Drugs,” the Iran-Contra affair and how the CIA helped fill the streets with crack cocaine in an attempt to fund Contras in Nicaragua, fill our prisons with young black men, and blame the poor for drugs in this country (for more on the Iran-Contra affair, read our review for The Coup’s “Pick A Bigger Weapon”).

The following verse gives a firsthand account of how these actions continue to affect black youth in this country today:

A lot of innocent lives are lost/ Black community paid the cost/ All the drugs and guns and we bought/ Financed CIA dirty wars/ I’m just a young boy brought down in the ghetto/ Cooling on the corners hanging with my fellas/ Now I’m sitting in a six by ten/ Got life with no parole/ Crack life done sold my soul/ And a brotha got all the blame/ I’m talking tons of crack/ Flying cross the boarder back/ I ain’t had no part in that/ Where my planes and vessels at?/ I’m talking that Dark Alliance/ CIA, drug smugglers, Contras/ Bad boys who move in silence/ This a different kind of monster/ Ain’t none of these crackas locked for the rest of their life in jail/ For the innocent folks they shot or the guns and drugs they sell/ Now the government’s war on drugs making it seem like I’m the reason/ Coca comes from overseas and most Americans do believe them/ Hit me with a CCE – Continued Crime Enterprise/ I’m just a ghetto youth caught up in the homicide/

Emotion, storytelling and knowledge. Beats, rhymes and flows. Wise Intelligent’s “The Talented Timothy Taylor” has them all, and is definitely one of the best hip-hop albums of 2007. If you don’t pick this one up, you’re just plain dumb. And as the homie Wise Intelligent might say, “It’s No Longer Smart to Be Dumb!” Think about it. Peace.

Album Track Listing:

1. Another Chance @ Life
2. I’m Him
3. Skit
4. Sensi Party
5. Skit
6. Go With Me
7. Youth & Thugs
8. Interlude
9. A Genocide
10. Skit
11. Ganja Smugglin
12. Skit
13. Police Can Do
14. Skit
15. Passing Tha Time
16. Still Black
17. Mama Cry
18. Summer In da JECTS
19. Barnes & Noble (+ Lesson)
20. This Is Love
21. Intelligent Wise
22. Set U Free
23. Cold World