Frugalis McSpiteful

FRUGALIS McSPITEFUL
Sunday School EP
Background Noise

I don't know how else to go about saying this, so I might as well start the review with this one important fact and get it over with: There is a track on this EP, a collaborative effort between rapper Tonekrusher Smith and producer Egypto Knuckles, about constant gastrointestinal distress. It is called "Bad Guts," and after two-plus minutes of graphic descriptions of what Dave Chappelle once referred to as "mud butt," its punch line consists of Frugalis's inexplicable inability to utilize this particular condition for a particular sex maneuver named for a city along the Cuyahoga River. This is probably where I lose many of you, and to be honest I understand completely.

In fact, that's more or less the point of the album. The Sunday School EP is a deliberate effort to provoke more "oh no he didn't"s per line than any local rap record just about ever, and depicting yourself as a stingy, deranged sex fiend who sounds like he lives in an underfurnished basement apartment is a pretty direct route. Fortunately, only Tonekrusher's Blowfly-caliber subject matter is crude; the fact that he delivers it with a lyrical dexterity and a self-aware knowledge that he's crossing the line helps drive home the joke. (It all peaks with "The Man," where he takes credit for every bad thing to happen to a famous person, from Hammer's bankruptcy to the Vikings sex boat scandal.) Suitably enough, Egypto's tight yet off-kilter production is this weird, decrepit sort of sleazploitation funk that sounds like it was put together for some low-budget porno comedy, which is what Sunday School basically is—a sex-style Kool Keith in a scene filled with love-needy LLs.