He's the kind of characterture you see in a Cohen Brother's film during an odd moment where the movie is poking fun at Hillbillies.  Or perhaps on a poster for what Crystal Meth abuse can do to your teeth.  He is the modern day Vanilla Ice, period.  He takes everything sacred about hip hop and prostitutes and generifies it until the lines become blurred by overexposure that record buyers are so used to seeing anyway with legitimate stars that once in a while like this one, they don't even know they're being duped.  The same thing was pulled off with Ashley Simpson, a reality TV show moved 2 million copies of an awful, generic, over-produced pop piece of trash whose artifice she unmasked and backed-up by lip-synching on Saturday Night Live.  In the case of PAUL WALL, Ashley has found her robotic male counterpart.  Paul Wall is to hip hop everything Ashley Simpson is to pop music.   

Sadly, this week- one of Billboard's weakest for album sales all summer, where not a single debut album moved above  200,000, Paul Wall got the top spot for selling 176,000.  A pathetic debut for any superstar rapper- plenty of emcees have had huge first-week debuts- Eminem, Kanye West, 50 Cent, Game, and so forth.  Paul Wall's record company would have you believe his claiming the number one slot puts him in the same category.  How sadly they are mistaken.  First of all, Paul Wall would have to had moved well above 176,000 units to be considered a legitimate part of the aforementioned class.  What his management and label are counting on, however, is that you buy the idea that he's in the class of Aftermath or Shady or G-Unit because he debuted at number one, despite the fact that if you read the fine print, and saw how many records he moved to get there, you would immediately dismiss him.   Wall's situation is similar to that of another washed-up movie star, martial arts action star Steven Seagal, who in 1996, had his first number one debut box office weekend in several films with �Fire Down Below', despite the fact that the movie grossed only $6 million its first weekend, hardly blockbuster numbers.  Still, because of the rules, they had to give him the number one slot, and of course, the press generically reported that he'd debuted atop the box office, and it made him look much bigger in commercial stature than he truly was for a moment.  The same is true of PAUL WALL!  Don't be fooled, and whatever you do, PLEASE DO NOT GO OUT AND BUY THIS ALBUM!  Its awful, it's worse than Vanilla Ice's first album- the one with Ice Ice Baby, which I only heard because my little brother blared it while working out.  

Everyone's been through that unfortunate experience- whether its your younger sister listening to Debbie Gibson, or your little brother in more recent times blasting Limp Bizkit.  Or your parents turning up Neil Diamond.  We've all been there, and Paul Wall is no exception.  Is the record industry this desperate for new rap stars?  Has Jay Z's retirement left this much of a void, where a joke like Paul Wall can slip through and pull the wool over the eyes of the industry?  There are many, many other viable underground emcees deserving of more attention than Paul Wall.  Now, some have come to this dickhead's defense by claiming that he �put in his dues' so now it's his turn.  That is no different than the Democrats having to run Al Gore because he �put in his dues', even though most insiders in his own political party will admit they didn't want him for their candidate.  Or the Republicans running Bob Dole in 1996 because he'd �put in the years' even though they knew he had NO REMOTE CHANCE of beating Bill Clinton.   If the rap industry feels a rap artist should get the spotlight because he put in his dues, give a genius like Lord Finness some air time!  Or finally make Cormega the superstar he should have been 5 years ago.  But not PAUL WALL, PLEASE NOT PAUL WALL!!!  His name is so f**king dumb to begin with!  

He's the type of dude whose album name you see and repeat to yourself in disbelief;  Perhaps similar to seeing �Diamond D and the Psychotic Neurotics', except Diamond D could actually rap.  Its time to put an end to this: this coming week- if my predictions are correct: Paul Wall's album will take at least a 40-50% dive in sales, putting him at a more appropriate 8 or 9 on the Top 200 Album Chart, and so forth till he has peaked at 300,000 or 350,000 units, his label falsely declares his record a GOLD seller, because they shipped 500,000 copies, even though he didn't sell nearly that.  He has no staying power at all on his own, so ideally, we have an opportunity to put this clown back on the traveling freak show he came from.  I mean seriously, this guy has about as much street credibility as Third Bass; I wish they could do a remake of �Pop Goes the Weazil', and instead of beating Vanilla Ice down with a baseball bat, Search and company could give Paul Wall a good and proper beatdown.  With the type of crap rap he spits, he surely has it coming.  Until that dream comes true however, we have to keep up the protest- in the editorial columns and at the record stores until the scourge of Paul Wall is gone forever!
 
 

Shameless Plug: Versailles Records recording artist Jasy Andrews recently released her debut double LP, 'Little Girl.'  Please visit www.myspace.com/jasyandrews, or www.jasyandrews.com to check out more, or visit your local record store

About the author: Jake Brown is owner/operator of Nashville-based Versailles Records and a biographer who has published several books. Click here to more details.