Happy 30th Anniversary to Big Daddy Kane’s third studio album Taste of Chocolate, originally released October 30, 1990.
At the beginning of the 1990s, rap music was beginning to move serious units. By the spring of 1990, MC Hammer would establish himself as the biggest pop star in the world with his second album Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em and his mega-smash single “U Can’t Touch This.” But Hammer got over on his entertainer persona, especially his dancing skills, and there was a need for a hip-hop superstar who could actually rap. The most obvious candidate, LL Cool J, was still in the lab, recalibrating after sustaining withering criticism for his third album Walking With a Panther (1989). As the year began, everything seemed right for Antonio “Big Daddy Kane” Hardy to take charge.
Big Daddy Kane was on a hell of a run as the 1990s began. The Brooklyn native was considered one of the best emcees breathing and was coming off two certified Gold albums. He had the skills, looks, and cool persona of someone who could be one the genre’s biggest stars. Plus, he had Warner Bros. and some of music’s most respected personalities backing him. So why did everything begin to falter when Kane put out his third album Taste of Chocolate three decades ago?
Taste of Chocolate is often seen in similar terms as Walking With a Panther: the first serious misstep by a superstar emcee. And much like Walking With a Panther, the disdain for Taste of Chocolate is often overdone. Yes, it’s not a perfect album, and certainly not as good Kane’s previous two releases. However, there’s a lot to like about it, and as the years pass, its flaws become less pronounced and more forgivable.
The prevailing theory is that fans rejected Cool J’s Walking With a Panther because he flashed too much opulence and seemed to be out of touch with his audience. Meanwhile, Taste of Chocolate was considered a miss because many thought Kane was trying to record his version of “Adult Contemporary Rap Music.” He seemed more concerned with a being a sex symbol than being a dope emcee.
As a teenager, I certainly remember feeling a bit apprehensive when I first bought Taste of Chocolate. It sported a cover that could have been mistaken for an album by the smoothed-out R&B singers who were staples of Quiet Storm radio. I also felt uneasy reading the “interview” in the album’s liner notes, where Kane cites being a “sexy entertainer” as one of his goals in life. Reading one of the best emcees around write about transforming himself into the next Marvin Gaye further cooled my enthusiasm for the album before I ever pressed play.
I believe that a big part of why Taste of Chocolate ended up the way it did is because there was very little conception of what it meant to be a “grown-up” rapper in 1990. At the start of the ’90s, you could probably count on only a few fingers the number of active rappers on the other side of 30 years old. Mostly rap was filled with twentysomethings living in the moment. Kane was in his early twenties when recording Taste of Chocolate, and searching for the right path to longevity. He had just come off two big hits with “Smooth Operator” and “I Get the Job Done,” both “ladies man” jams. It made sense at the time to try to continue to chart that course.
Kane seemed at least partially influenced by his newfound celebrity among some of the luminaries at Warner Bros. Quincy Jones featured him on a pair of songs on his platinum selling and GRAMMY Award winning Back on the Block (1989). Jones saw Kane as a superstar in the making, musing that he was Otis Redding reincarnated. Kane also caught the attention of Benny Medina, the famed former A&R at Motown and then Vice President of Warner Bros’ urban music division. With the mega success of Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em earlier that year, Medina apparently envisioned Kane as the label’s version of MC Hammer.
I guess we can feel lucky that if the label’s higher-ups had their way, Taste of Chocolate could have been a lot worse. In the book Goin’ Off: The Story of the Juice Crew & Cold Chillin’ Records, Kane said Medina was pushing him to record a song sampling Rick James’ “You and I,” after Hammer’s success sampling “Super Freak.” Kane balked. “I think we had the same vision,” he explained, “just different paths of getting there. I wanted commercial success, I just didn’t want to sell out to get it.” Kane has said that his differences with Medina and the label caused him to rush through the album’s recording, and not give it his best effort.
In his attempts to become a more “adult” emcee, Kane decided to sand down some of his rougher edges. Part of that meant making music that would appeal to a broader range of the population, especially women. Kane decided to be, in the words of Jeff Smith, Warner Bros. product manager, “hard for the fellas, but soft for the ladies.” As a result, Taste of Chocolate is a mixed bag that serves multiple audiences, but it’s at its best when Kane sticks to his established strengths.
Much like his previous release, It’s a Big Daddy Thing (1989), Kane produces a little over half the album himself. This time out, Marley Marl is completely absent from the album, a continuation of his reduced role on Big Daddy Thing. Kane uses a few other outside producers on Taste of Chocolate, many of whom came from within the Cold Chillin’ fold, including his DJ, Mister Cee, and Biz Markie cohort Cutmaster Cool V. Prince Paul, who had a history producing for Kane, contributes a pair of beats as well.
The album’s first single “’Cause I Can Do It Right” definitely chases the success that Kane found with “Smooth Operator” and “I Get the Job Done.” It’s more upbeat than the former and more straight-ahead hip-hop than the latter. It’s an enjoyable and catchy single, with Kane going full mack-mode, pledging to steal your girl using his calm demeanor. Though it was the third most successful single of Kane’s career, it lacks the staying power of his earlier hits and anthems.
A much better entry is “It’s Hard Being the Kane,” the album’s second single. It’s Taste of Chocolate’s version of “Wrath of the Kane” or “Set It Off,” with Kane delivering a powerful lyrical assault. Prince Paul re-freaks multiple elements from James Brown’s instrumental “The Soul of J.B,” to create one of the best tracks on the album. Throughout the song, Kane balances serving emcees with dispersing the lessons that he learned from the Nation of Islam. His rapid-fire, tongue-twisting delivery is still impressive as he raps, “I rushed and crushed and stomped the comp that tried / To get fly and face the ace I put ’em in place / Proceed ’em, retreat ’em, defeat ’em, delete ’em, and feed ’em, and eat ’em / And all the rest of that good stuff, ’cause I don’t need ’em.”
Kane also excels on Taste of Chocolate when he kicks more politically and socially aware rhymes. “Who Am I” is a strong entry, with Kane focusing on struggling to maintain his identity in the face of adversity. He first raps from the perspective of a Native African forced into slavery, robbed of his history and culture, shifting on his second verse to the perspective of an artist compromising his artistic integrity by chasing pop success. The song finishes with a verse from Gamilah Shabazz, one of Malcolm X’s daughters. She gives a solid enough performance, rapping about the difficulty of living as a Black woman in the United States.
“Dance With the Devil” is another dope conscious song, with Kane warning of the perils of the drug trade and the violence often associated with it. Kane pleads with the members of the community to value their own lives and those of their neighbors over material gain. He shifts gears to go the more humorous route on the Prince Paul-produced “No Damn Good,” where he disses both women looking to use their bodies to gain money from high rollers, as well as men pretending to be big shots in order to impress their peers.
Most of Taste of Chocolate’s missteps come from tracks that feature guest appearances from outside the realm of hip-hop. In different interviews, Kane has described Taste of Chocolate as “a stamp collection” or “my autograph book—people I looked up to or wanted to smash.” This approach led to the two worst songs that Kane ever recorded: “All of Me” and “Keep ’Em on the Floor.”
“All of Me” is a duet with Barry White, who the Brooklyn emcee practically worshipped. The treacly ballad, featuring Kane reciting spoken verses while White ad-libs, is awful. Yes, Kane had ballads on his previous two albums, and “All of Me” is just as bad as those too. It ranks amongst the bottom rung of hip-hop tracks recorded in the golden era by otherwise dope emcees.
“Keep ’Em On the Floor” features vocals from Atlantic Starr’s Barbara Weathers and it’s a blatant attempt at pop success, with Kane crafting a weak early ’90s dance track. Kane’s rhymes are pretty limp and Weathers’ singing adds nothing of value to the track. Its only saving grace is a sample of James Brown’s “Talking Loud and Saying Nothing,” which will always be funky.
“Big Daddy Kane Vs. Dolemite” is much better than these previous two entries, but still doesn’t completely work. I credit it with introducing me to the raunchy storytelling and trash-talking talents of Rudy Ray Moore, which is worth something. However, nearly five minutes of the two playing the dozens over a sample of The Dramatics’ “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get” doesn’t have a lot of replay value.
The second half of the album finds its footing when Kane takes a more back-to-basics approach to his music. One clear example is “Mr. Pitiful,” where Kane delves into his origin as artist. As Cool V hooks up a sample of the breakdown to Average White Band’s “Person To Person,” Kane chronicles his career’s earliest stages in one lengthy verse, describing everything from meeting Biz Markie in 1984 to releasing Long Live the Kane in 1988. But there’s a sense of sadness and frustration throughout the back-half of the track, as success and fame hasn’t necessarily led to happiness. With all the track’s brutal honesty, Kane has since said that it’s his second favorite song that he’s ever recorded.
“Put Your Weight On It” features Kane dropping another lengthy verse while rapping over raw breakbeats. As Mister Cee goes from “Impeach the President” to “Big Beat” to “Rocket In the Pocket,” Kane delivers rugged battle-oriented rhymes. “And yes, still putting rappers in fear,” he boasts, “So hold it right there, ’cause this is a nightmare / As I cause a killer scene, and cut like a guillotine / Any thoughts you had about winning is still a dream.”
The album closes with the posse cut “Down the Line,” featuring Kane and his immediate crew members rhyming over a solid drum track, a subtle bassline, and occasional organ runs. The line-up doesn’t exactly rival “The Symphony,” as Kane shares the mic with Scoob and Scrap Lover (his dancers), Mister Cee (his DJ), Ant Live (his manager), and Little Daddy Shane (his younger brother). Kane leads off and comes correct, “Kicking ass in every committee, city to city, until both shoes are shitty.” Shane is the strongest of the rest, showing some flashes of the charisma that his older brother possesses.
Taste of Chocolate might not deserve its bad rep, but it’s still widely considered the beginning of the end of Kane’s reign at the top. In truth, his follow-up, Prince of Darkness (1991), was considerably worse, as he even further embraced a “rap version of Barry White” persona. He would continue to position himself as a sex symbol outside the world of hip-hop agreeing to both pose in Playgirl and in Madonna’s 1992 Sex book with the pop queen and Naomi Campbell.
Thirty years later after Taste of Chocolate’s release, there are lots of emcees on the other side of 40 and 50 still rapping and recording music. It turns out that the approach to be a “grown” hip-hop artist isn’t really that different than being a young one: speak your truth and find your audience. Pre-COVID, rappers from Kane’s era still toured the world performing their hits, and many of his peers still record and release excellent music.
Much like Walking With a Panther, Taste of Chocolate could have been a close to great album. It needed a little more focus and a lot fewer bad attempts at pop appeal. Regardless, what does work further reinforces that Kane was at his best when delivering pure verbal heat and socially conscious material. Others may have seen him as the heir to Otis Redding or Hammer in the making, but Kane was still at his best when he was himself.
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