NY Times reviews the Joe Budden album

JOE BUDDEN
“Padded Room”
(Amalgam Digital)

Joe Budden would like you to know that he’s fine. Just fine, thank you. Taking exception to an early review of “Padded Room,” this New Jersey rapper’s second proper solo album, that described him as frustrated with the record business, he took to the Internet to make one thing clear.

“Joe Budden fans, Internet soldiers, anyone else on the Internet, reviewers, critics, haters, chat room visitors,” he said, exhausted, in a clip posted on YouTube. “I am not frustrated with anything. I’m not frustrated with the Internet, the music industry, downloading, bloggers, vloggers, rappers, record sales, record labels, executives, radio.”

Fine, see?

Even though he was talking, not rapping, it still sounded like a lot of Joe Budden’s songs, which are generally more like monologues or, at times, harangues. A couple of early club-friendly hits notwithstanding, Mr. Budden has made much hay of his complex, often troubled inner life. “They say my symptoms are aggressive,” he raps here, on “Angel in My Life.” “They title me a compulsive obsessive-slash-manic depressive.” But really, he’s just a classic Woody Allen-level neurotic, worrying his issues until they’re rubbed raw.

That makes “Padded Room” a curious and often inspired album, a set of reflections in mirrors held up at different angles. On “If I Gotta Go,” as he has done before, he talks about his childhood gone bad: “Problem is, I’m smarter than everybody/But too numb to show it/and they too dumb to know it.” He chronicles despicable misbehavior with women on “I Couldn’t Help It.” And the stirring “Do Tell” is composed almost entirely of apologies. (To his father: “I tried to find myself, but I was your replica/I mean, I only tried to be what you never was.”)

But while Joe Budden is enamored of his rhymes, which are taut, intricate and structurally varied, he raps in a scraped-up monotone, a technician first and stylist second. Occasionally he’ll slip into a clipped bellow like Scarface to emphasize a point, but mostly he lets his words do the talking. And since he’s thinking hard, unforgiving of everyone including himself, it’s little wonder everyone thinks he’s frustrated. JON CARAMANICA