Review

Jim Jones & Harry Fraud

The Fraud Department

The Fraud Department • 2021

Jim Jones is a storyteller. One who often has more to say than a bar allows. Normally, the New Yorker has often avoided the gaps between the lines in his 20-year career – evil tongues even claim that the real albums take place in the adlips. But actually it only took a producer genius like Harry Fraud to show: Jim Jones is drumless happy. Jazzy samples, no slapping kicks that make you notice that Jim lands off the beat and lots of atmosphere – that’s the secret recipe of »The Fraud Department«. But the two not only seem like a well-rehearsed team, especially Jim Jones is as present and precise as maybe last on »Hustler’s P.O.M.E.« from 2006. The eternal Dipset member is still a kid from Harlem despite entrepeneurship (for example with high-class alcohol) and Black Lives Matter didn’t leave him cold either. Besides a bit of superfluous bling (»Bada Bing«), Jones doesn’t shy away from social issues. The mentions of George Floyd come across as believable and honest. Then, when Conway the Machine raps from Griselda about how his uncle was also killed by the police, goosebumps cover the body. All this is all the more surprising, 15 years ago probably no one would have thought that Jim Jones is still relevant in 2021 far ahead of Juelz or Cam’ron of the former Diplomats. All the more beautiful is this high-class, wonderfully unaffected produced and abruptly socio-political rap album.