Viktor Vaughn - Vaudeville Villain

Belvedere Jehosophat - Monday, 20 December, 2004 - Print Version

Viktor Vaughn is MF Doom - MF Doom is Viktor Vaughn

I shot some savage craps when I bought this CD, and I guess I did pretty well; Vaudeville Villain probably isn't the classic that people are making it out to be, but it's probably one of the best hip hop CDs to have been released in 2003.

The beats were put together by an assortment of producers, the most famous of whom is Rjd2.
The music flips between Temple of Boom creepiness (but less stoned) and post-Prefuse 73 weirdness. It sometimes hangs out somewhere in the middle.

The intention of the producers was, I think, to create an album that derives most of its energy from atmosphere as opposed to 'songs' — in fact; there are no choruses to be found on the CD, just Viktor Vaughn spitting magic over a verse or two.
It's probably the same sort of thing that he sought to achieve with Madvillainy, but I can't really speak to that because I've yet to personally hear that album.

Paradoxically, the thing that makes Vaudeville Villain good is also its limiting reagent: the creation of such a murky album comes at the expense of any real shift in dynamics.
The closest analogy I can think of is that listening to Vaudeville Villain is like walking through a smoky room where all definition is banished and where everything you take in is never nothing more than hazy impressions.

This means that, if you're not careful, you can come away from listening to the CD with the uneasy feeling that nothing you've heard is memorable enough to have stuck in your mind. As such, it's a headphones album all the way — close listening revealing as it does the carefully crafted beats and the slight lyrical tricks that the easily bored so desperately crave in hip hop.
It is also in these nuances that you'll find the musical genius of Vaudeville Villain.

The star of the show is Viktor Vaughn — probably one of the most charismatic MCs currently rhyming rhymes — who alternates between gritty street tales and kitsch sci-fi and sometimes plots a course between the two.
This, of course, explains how a song that features Viktor slashing the windpipe of a cop and a drug deal that goes wrong can be followed by one that makes reference to Star Trek's Neelix and Kes.

A running narrative, near as I can tell, is non-existent, or, at least, it extends only to the fact the MF Doom constantly refers to himself as Viktor Vaughn, though scattered in between the songs are a series of samples that sound like they're taken from a cartoon or something that help make the CD a little more cohesive.

There aren't any skits on the album, which is a plus because skits are mostly retarded.
There are also a few guests, Apani B. (Fly?) and M. Sayyid, who both do very good work on their respective tracks.

Vaudeville Villain looks like this:

I suggest you buy it.

Actually, buy this first:

Bigg Jus' Black Mamba Serums V2.0 is the classic that Vaudeville Villain could have been.

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