“Jimmy Spicer’s decade or so of rap singles (he never made an album) are on the rapping tip, remarkably consistent. He spent the decade-plus rapping in a vampire voice or with a ridiculous accent and pronouncing shit like you’d just had the flu the week prior with only smart, subtle variation in voice and cadence. Spicer saw no reason for reinvention or a need to grow “hard” even as beats shifted away from rudimentary–or I should say “rudimentary”–funk loops (“Adventures of Super Rhyme”) towards electro (“The Bubble Bunch” and “Money”) and ultimately, on the Rick Rubin-produced “Beat the Clock/This Is It”, those first glimpses of hard-as-fuck drums that’d dominate the next decade and a half of hip-hop…”