Fabolous – There Is No Competition: Death Comes In 3’s

If I ruled the world, I’d give Fabolous and DJ Drama a weekly half-hour TV program on which they’d preside over the mock funeral of a different rapper each week. I believe this idea is guaranteed comedy gold and would generate more memorable one-liners than any TV program since Chappelle’s Show. Why would I do this? Because if Fab and Dram are to be believed, There Is No Competition: Death Comes In 3’s is the last installment in the mixtape series that, if there was any justice on planet Earth, would forever be the “Weekend Update” to Gangsta Grillz’ Saturday Night Live.

Death Comes In 3’s dropped on Christmas Day, and its intro, the appropriately titled “Intro,” features Funeral Fab and Drama Cain delivering yet another eulogy for “the competition,” while backed by Mykola Leontyvych’s “Carol Of The Bells” (did I have to google the composer of this piece? Yes, yes I did). Besides the fact that the duo’s competition has now apparently died more times than Kenny on South Park, I respect this move because I hope that DJ Drama’s anguished cries of “Y’all turned us into serial killers!” will inspire future generations of Christmas carol authors in a more Tarantino-esque direction.

Now, as for the actual music… it’s basically There Is No Competition 2: The Funeral Service, but not nearly as good. Funeral Service saw Fab taking already-good songs like “Roger That,” “Beamer, Benz Or Bentley” and “All The Way Turnt Up” and bludgeoning them to death with clever punch lines. Death Comes In 3’s, on the other hand, is basically Fab taking a bunch of mediocre beats and saying, “oh, you don’t think I can use this line as a hook? Watch me!” The man’s built up enough residual charisma over his career to earn forgiveness from me to the point where I refuse to accept that he named a song “Swag Champ” and spit “I don’t jerk off in public/But I been out doin’ myself” as the chorus for any reason besides proving he had the cajones to do it.

That said, Death Comes In 3’s definitely has more than enough #Nice one-liners to warrant some listens. Once Trey Songz shows up around track seven, the tape really hits its stride. On “Spend It,” Fab goes Rick Ross Bauce Mode and rhymes, “Ridin’ round through my city/Emphasis on MY city,” a line so good Dram brings it back twice before the verse continues. It takes true swagger to deliver an “oh, shit!” line while rhyming a phrase with itself, and nine out of ten times it fails. But this is why Fab murders his competition.

The “this shouldn’t work but it does” bang-fest (pause?) continues with “Black City,” which somehow transforms “black city bitch” into an irresistible hook. The rest of the tape approaches but never quite reaches Funeral Service levels of thugged-out-hilarious awesomeness, but “Unfuckwitable” deserves mention, if only for the superb title. The tape cascades with Fab’s rendition of “Lord Knows,” which brings his count of Drake remixes in the past 24 months to about 87 (but who’s counting?), followed up by a (spoiler alert!) Public Enemies-themed hidden track.

While Death Comes In 3’s may be the Return Of The Jedi of the Competition threesome (as in, a major drop from its predecessors), it’s still a (guiltily) enjoyable go around, despite its often-Atlanta-like beat selection. But like George Lucas with Star Wars, I refuse to believe that Fab and Drama will ever be finished killing the competition, and whether or not it ever happens, I’m gearing myself up for There Is No Competition 4: The Zombie Apocalypse.