Harold Stallworth takes care to never say the year.
Few rappers live to enjoy a level of acclaim so universal that praise and applause, no matter how deserving, runs the risk of coming across as cliché. “In The Scrolls,” slated to appear on Large Professor’s forthcoming solo album, Living Legend, finds the good professor saluting his most renowned mentee, Nas, in surprisingly clichéd fashion. His recollection of the early-90s, of Nas’s intern phase, rings about as vague as a receding hairline. He’s too humble, perhaps, for the task at hand; to lionize Nas is to lionize himself. Even during an awkward, self-orchestrated radio request pinned to the tail-end of the record, an anonymous caller conveniently picks over his own vital contributions to Illmatic.
Oddly enough, it’s longtime Bravehearts affiliate G-Wiz—formerly known as Wizard, Grand Wizard, and the guy responsible for the all-too-short “Untouchable” interlude on The Firm’s self-titled debut—that steals the show here. He recalls riding the train alongside a teenage Nas, splitting a turkey and cheese sandwich. Hearing the best verse ever spat. A verse that Nas would later leave behind on the train car. G-Wiz has probably told this story to everyone he’s met over the last 20 years. You can imagine the tattered composition book, riddled with sharpie graffiti and blunt residue, still tucked away in New York City Transit’s lost property claim office. Entombed by decades of subway fodder—car keys, sky pagers, engagement rings, messenger bags, starter hats, and cassette-tape Walkmans. It’s a great anecdote, though not nearly enough to overcome the record’s monotonous Bobby Womack loop, nor its clever yet cheesy Posdnous-sampled hook.
