Daiquiri Factory - Cocaine Raps, Vol. 2

iTunes Review

Andre Nickatina deemed his 2000 album Daiquiri Factory a sequel to his 1997 debut Cocaine Raps because he was once again striving to create the most audacious, unforgettable rap songs possible. Daiquiri Factory shows Nickatina breaching the far limits of his own untamed imagination, which is what made it his finest album up to that date. Produced primarily by Nick Peace — who oversaw the original Cocaine Raps — this album reaches for rhythms and sounds never before used in rap music. Every song has a sonic signature — the piercing violins of “Bakin’ Soda In Minnesota,” the squirrelly clarinets on “Daiquiri Factory,” the pulsing xylophones on “Birds With No Wings.” The beat on “The Al Capone Suite” is a rapper’s nightmare — no funk, no low end, just a thrashing string section looped in the most maddening time signature imaginable. And yet Nickatina rides the beat like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bull. Listening to the album as a whole you can feel the full range of Nickatina’s personality, from the surrealist mischief of “Alphabet Soup” to the brooding confessions of “Fears of a Coke Lord” and “Last Rap I’ll Ever Write.”