Pitchfork

Swizz Beatz is one of the most dependable big-name producers in rap. His clanging, anthemic keyboard-beats were one of the main forces behind the late-90s rise of the Ruff Ryders crew, and more recently he's kept buys churning out dense, furious club-bangers for the likes of Beyonce and T.I. But he's not a rapper. "It's Me, Bitches", the Swizz solo single that hit radio early in the year, is a total mess. On that track, he huffs and puffs, grunting a lot and saying absolutely nothing, repeating the same verses twice, attempting to make a hook out of "chillin' in my Beamer, listening to 'Ether'" despite the fact that "Beamer" doesn't even come close to rhyming with "Ether." And yet "It's Me, Bitches" is one of the best rap singles of the year. The song is a delirious burst of energy, oscillating synth-blips and churning martial strings hammering away while sirens scream and drums shatter. The track keeps interrupting itself, flying apart and then back together before ending in a great incendiary scratch-solo. Any actual rapper would have a hell of a time navigating this minefield, but Swizz just plays hypeman for himself, screaming catchphrases and adding to the clutter rather than trying to stay above it. "It's Me, Bitches" is a forceful and mindless dumb-out classic, and it feels like a glorious fluke, the sort of success that could not possibly repeat itself. As great as "It's Me, Bitches" might be, it doesn't exactly give the impression that Swizz Beatz would be capable of making a good album.

Somehow, though, One Man Band Man is a good album, though by no means a great one. The album works because Swizz for the most part internalizes the lessons of "It's Me, Bitches", camouflaging his weaknesses and sometimes even turning them into strengths. The album's best songs are meaningless shots of adrenaline built on the dizzy energy of that first single. Follow-up "Money in the Bank" is even busier and nearly as inspired; its tire-screeches, stadium-drums, finger-snaps, stadium-chants, bass-rumbles, and squeaky sped-up vocals somehow cohere into something simple and infectious. "Top Down", meanwhile, swirls riotous bursts of 70s-soul horns and strings around one another.

Best of all is "Take a Picture", which slightly slows the tempo without losing the album's sense of exhilaration. Built on top of a luminous sample of the joyous burlbing bass from Bill Withers' "Take a Picture", the song works as a loopy, euphoric grin, even if Swizz doesn't do much more than brag about his funny. In fact, Swizz's clumsy-ass rapping has a sort of goofily naive charm to it. He delivers all his lyrics in a breathless bark and repeats himself constantly: one song after "chillin' in my Beamer, listening to 'Ether,'" he's "cruisin' in that Lambo, lookin' like Rambo." He sounds utterly elated to be rapping, blissfully unaware that virtually every line is a certifiable clunker.

The album is short: Ten songs, one obligatory all-star remix, and one pointless voicemail message from Snoop Dogg. It's over in roughly half and hour, which barely gives the energy any time to lag. Confusingly, the only rapping guest to appear on any track other than the all-star remix is Ruff Ryders refugee Drag-On, who turns up on "Bust Ya Gunz" and who's only barely a better rapper than Swizz. Even more confusingly, Swizz himself only produces about half the tracks, though the guest beatmakers mostly do a good job at recreating his antic aesthetic. Against all odds, One Man Band Man never wears out its welcome.

The album only falls to pieces when Swizz tries to get serious, which he does on tracks bad enough to cast a huge shadow over the whole thing. On "The Funeral", Swizz tries to sound haunted and paranoid, but he ends up with a handful of ridiculously dumb pseudo-goth images like "it's been nothing but black clouds and black cats/ And every night I see an old man with black slacks." Lyrically, the sleepy, downtrodden poverty-reminisce "Part of the Plan" may be even worse: "I wish I could fly away on a unicorn/ I'm from the ghetto, and every day a human's born." Confusingly, the track is billed as featuring Chris Martin, but that guest-appearance turns out to just be a sample from "X&Y", which isn't even a good Coldplay song. If "Part of the Plan" manages to end the recent trend of rappers looking to Chris Martin for choruses, it'll justify its existence. Meanwhile, Swizz is a whole lot better off yelling over sirens and talking about his money.