The Magnificent TMD: This Is Me, Reviewed

The Magnificent TMD

This Is Me (self-released)

by ANDREW MILLER

As the “magnificent” part of his moniker suggests, TMD doesn’t suffer from a lack of self-esteem. The Kansas City-based rapper confidently cedes the microphone to the album’s art director Gino Morrow (founder of the Black Poets Collective) for the opening cut, unafraid that the slam champion might be a difficult act for another wordsmith to follow. This gambit backfires — 22 tracks later, Morrow still owns the record’s finest lines — but TMD establishes himself as a competent, positive-focused lyricist with a knack for back-in-the-day reminiscing and jaw-droppingly random simile source material (you been neglected like that child in Mommie Dearest.) This Is Me feels a bit stretched, especially when TMD returns to the same punchlines and references (Randy Moss’s pantomimed mooning, Plato, birds that fly and/or get high) in multiple songs. TMD’s intense delivery, which resembles knockout-mode LL Cool J, fits his aggressive tunes, but it sounds overheated during his mellowest selections. During his best songs (“Poster Time,” “Open Up”), TMD offers inspirational advice over bouncy backdrops, his vivid street-life confessions making it clear he knows what he’s talking about, G-rated language (this smells like doo-doo) aside. Like Naughty By Nature’s 1991 single “Ghetto Bastard,” these cuts use simple language and strong, upbeat hooks to convey their keep-ya-head-up messages. This self-proclaimed “Lyrical Man” might not possess the smoothest flow in town, but he’s an expert communicator.