Happy 30th Anniversary to Scarface’s third studio album The Diary, originally released October 18, 1994.
When people speak of great release dates in hip-hop history, October 18, 1994 doesn’t get mentioned enough. On this day, The Coup, Digable Planets and O.C. all dropped classic albums. It was also the date that Death Row Records put out the Murder Was The Case soundtrack, one of the best soundtracks of all time. And yet, probably the strongest album that hit the shelves that day was The Diary by Houston’s Brad “Scarface” Jordan.
Scarface has one of the greatest discographies in music history, so it says something that this album, his third, is arguably the best in his extensive catalogue. “The Diary was deeper and broader than anything I’d done before, and wiser too,” he wrote in his autobiography, Diary of a Madman.
The Diary is a different sort of Scarface album, and not necessarily in the way that he described. Since the beginning of his recording career, Scarface has crafted songs about dispensing violence and death without hesitation, but he’s always leavened it with vivid descriptions of deep feelings of guilt and psychological anguish. For this project, he mostly forgoes the remorse. Maybe it’s a larger statement about how the omnipresence of death has removed any feelings of regret, but he operates through much of The Diary as a killer with single-minded purpose.
Another change came through the album’s production. Like most rappers, Scarface made extensive use of sampling during the late 1980s and early 1990s as both a member of Geto Boys and as a solo artist. With his sophomore release The World Is Yours (1993), he began incorporating more live instrumentation. On The Diary, he makes uses of in-house studio musicians almost entirely. It works well, making it one of his best produced albums of his career.
In Diary of a Madman, Scarface credits Rap-A-Lot producer N.O. Joe for the album’s musical success, along with then newcomer Mike Dean, who has since become a production legend in his own right. “[Joe] brought me a new sound—this funky swing with really heavy, noisy drums. … [A]nd together we were able to create a whole new platform that gave my shit a new, unique sound to build on and expand and contract around.”
The aforementioned shift in lyrical approach first manifests itself on “The White Sheet,” The Diary’s opening track. He warns all potential enemies that he’s out for blood and will not hesitate in killing anyone who approaches him the wrong way. There’s the tiniest of hints of mental turmoil on “No Tears,” when he asserts, “I'm goin' off on the deep end / I found myself face-to-face with myself while I'm sleeping.” But the rest of the song is about Scarface hunting down and killing the man who murdered a close friend of his.
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More often, Scarface envisions himself as an Old West gunslinger. He adopts this persona quite literally on “Jesse James,” which had first appeared on the Jason’s Lyric soundtrack (1994), released less than a month before The Diary. Face describes operating with ruthless efficiency, with the final verse serving as a testament to the nihilistic philosophy that permeates much of the album, where the impermanence of life has undercut its inherent value. “'Cause life has no meaning, no meaning,” he declares. “We were all born to die, so no screaming.”
Death is the focal point of “I Seen a Man Die,” the album’s first single and centerpiece, as well as one of the signature tracks in Scarface’s catalogue. Scarface has said he wrote and recorded the song while stoned out of his gourd and didn’t even remember what he wrote until he got out of the recording booth and listened to what he laid down. Out of that drug-induced haze, Face was able to create one of the most solemn and astute meditations about the end of one’s life.
On the track, Face contemplates life’s frailty as he relates the tale of a man just released from a seven-year prison bid. Drawn back to a life of crime, he ends up killing for money, until he’s eventually murdered himself. As Scarface narrates the song from beyond the mortal coral on the second and third verses, it becomes a dedication to making peace with your life decisions and accepting the finality of death.
Scarface channels a different sort of spirit on “Hand of the Dead Body,” the other single from the album. Joined by Ice Cube, along with Devin the Dude on the hook, he launches blistering attacks against those who attempted to demonize rappers and hip-hop culture for poisoning the minds of the nation’s youth. Rap culture had become an increasingly convenient target for right-wing politicians and activists like C. Delores Tucker and Calvin Butts. “Hip-Hop was always getting caught up in so much bullshit in the courts and in the media,” he wrote in Diary of a Madman. “So this song was an opportunity to take aim and fire back at that pattern of casting blame and censoring us.”
Scarface engages in the most introspection on “Mind Playing Tricks ’94,” a sequel of sorts to the Geto Boys hit from We Can’t Be Stopped (1991) that put him on the radar as the rapper with the tortured soul. The song was originally intended to be a solo track for ’Face, featuring a guest verse from Willie D, but it was reimagined to give Bushwick Bill the opportunity to rap that final hallucinatory verse.
Here, Scarface finally gets the track all to himself, this time with in-house musicians replaying the Isaac Hayes’ “Hung Up On My Baby” sample. Much like the first installment, he grapples with paranoia, fear of betrayal, and issues with abandonment by the ones he loves. He also lays into preachers who have turned religion into a “fashion show,” using their churches as the means for their own material gain rather than houses of worship.
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The Diary also features Scarface going in for a few changes of pace, both literally and figuratively. He’s in full player mode on “Goin Down,” confidently boasting about his sexual prowess and ability to pull anyone else’s girlfriend or wife, including those of his homies, because “if they caught one of my ho's, they'd do the same to me.” The track features lush and occasionally delicate production, bolstered by solid work on the synthesizers. Scarface crooning the chorus to the tune of Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” is certainly memorable.
The Diary ends with the title track, which features Scarface engaging in a rare activity for him: a knock-down, drag-out lyrical battle. Over breakbeat-styled production, Scarface conducts a lyrical sprint, unleashing a 40+ bar verse, that relentlessly pummels (and blasts) his would-be enemies into submission. “I ain't your average motherfucker,” he raps. “You step out of line and watch a motherfucker bust ya / 'Cause you done came at me the wrong way / I ain't no Clint Eastwood, n***a, and you done picked the wrong day.”
The Diary earned Scarface more critical and commercial acclaim, going platinum and scoring some of the warmest reviews of his career to that point. The project was also well-respected by his peers. In Diary, he marvels, “I’ll always remember one of Dr. Dre’s engineers telling me that Dre kept a copy of The Diary in the studio as reference for how sick some shit could sound.”
Scarface manages to say a lot in a short amount of time with The Diary, further demonstrating the potency of his words, the power of his ideas, and the outright funkiness of his music. It’s as powerful and memorable as any album out there.
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