Houston's history is dotted with albums that, fairly or not, have been swept aside. We'll examine them here. Have an album that you think nobody knows about but should? Email [email protected].
Dustin Prestige The Kelly and Jessie EP (Self-released, 2011)
Dustin Prestige, an unintentionally enigmatic Missouri City MC, is an almost cautionary tale: Seemingly over the course of a single weekend, he went from nobodydom to near underground stardom two years ago, then turtled himself away shortly after when he became uncomfortable with the exposure and how it began to affect his music (See: Houston Presto Vol. 2).
Since then, he's popped up sporadically on this single or that feature, most impressively on hasHBrown's Forgive Me Not tape, but has mostly kept to himself. Now, at the tender age of 28, he is prepping the release of his first proper LP, The Prestigious, with a three-part EP series called The Saved By The Bell Drama, As Told By Dustin Prestige.
The first segment, The Kelly and Jessie EP, was just released and is now available on iTunes. The remaining two, To Lisa, With Love and Black Zach Morris, will be available before June 27.
Kelly and Jessie is springy and wiry and ambitious and generally indicative of the talent that had everybody clamoring for more Prestige when he first popped.
Y'allmustaforgotability: 94 percent
Read what Y'allmustaforgotability means.
Best Song on the Album: "Army Of Me"
Though nearly a category stolen by album opener "2 Girls, 1 Presto," a Britpop/rock track that ends with Prestige trying to persuade Kelly and Jessie into participating in a threesome*, "Army Of Me" is the album's best song, emotive, original and intriguing. It is grimy and chunky and possessed of a mouthful of teeth. Also: It's a rap song only in the loosest terms. There are bloody drums and bleeding guitars and a bloodied Prestige, him crowing over and over again, "I'm a one man army, I'm a one man army."
The last minute and a half of the song consists of a bunch of you-broke-my-heart-themed Saved By The Bell sound bites. It's not as masturbatory as Kanye's album cut of "Runaway," but it's closer to that than not.
*There's no way this doesn't happen. Kelly always seemed to be maniacally sexual, though that might have been just how we saw it, and we all saw what Jessie did in Showgirls, or, as it's also called: The Greatest Cinematic Achievement In History.
Most Astute Line on the Album: "A style only mamas can love; I'm a T-Mac."
We'd be very surprised to learn that there was anybody on the planet that loves T-Mac that isn't his mother. Man, poor guy. Wait, is he still alive?
