Brad Jordan, head of A&R for Def Jam South, was a big success after just a few months on the job; his signing of
Ludacris in 2000 paid off in triple-platinum after less than a year. It's not every A&R man who's rewarded for great work with an album of his own, but then again, not every A&R man is also one of the most influential voices in the history of hip-hop. After defining the down South gangsta during the late '80s with
Geto Boys,
Scarface began a solo career that earned him a couple of gold albums and saw some of the biggest names in rap (
2Pac,
Ice Cube,
Kurupt, Too Short) angling to work with him -- this back when posse tracks were rarities.
Scarface fans will recognize quite a few of the usual themes throughout
The Fix, like the good-times-and-bad territory anthem "My Block" (complete with an old-school production, '70s style) and "In Cold Blood," a first-person journal entry from a gang-banger. The highlights, though, find
Scarface morphing back into Jordan the bottom-line businessman, banking on the familiar names: "Guess Who's Back" is more a
Jay-Z track with a little room for
Scarface than the other way around, and the same goes for the
Nas feature, "In Between Us." And
Pharrell from
Neptunes takes over "Someday," with
Faith Evans adding a little sugar to the chorus to make up for the patented
Scarface growl on the verses. Though
The Fix has him reaching for the charts as well as focusing on the personal, the inimitable
Scarface balances the competing concerns well. ~ John Bush