Released in 2000, Got It Made made pose and sass equal partners to Brassy's chopped-up chuck wagon of beats, funk, and punkish hip-hop. Even if the end result was one-dimensional (and it definitely was), there was enough spunky attitude to give it some legs. Unfortunately, Muffin Spencer and her pack of musical pranksters aren't doing anything but treading water on Gettin Wise, their belated follow-up. The album arrives only after the last bit of juice was squeezed from "Play Some D." Remixed countless times, re-released at least three, and licensed to Motorola for worldwide use, it was like Brassy knew the mildly funky track was their single shining moment. Incredibly, one of Gettin Wise's few memorable moments is the fittingly named "Still Stealing," which actually recycles "D"'s already recycled riff. That's a lot of recycling. But it seems to be the m.o. for Brassy, who on Wise have only managed to exchange tepid hip-hop posturing for the first album's equally vague snatches of scraggly, punk-inspired guitar. The relative standouts "Hit 'Em Hard" and "1-0-0" are the best examples of this; they don't wear out their solitary hooks as quickly as virtually everything else on Wise. But even here, Spencer's hand-on-hip yap is all pose and nothing of substance -- her rapping amounts to plucky muttering over dull percussion loops and repetitive packets of featureless faux funk. Got It Made got pretty old after a while, too. But Gettin Wise doesn't even generate enough steam to make an initial impression. "Everything You Need"'s sole purpose seems to be spelling out Brassy in interminable slow motion. "Feeling Sorry" returns to the finger-wagging phrasing of the first album, but when Spencer checks Timbaland lyrically, it sounds more like a theft than a shout-out. And the title track merely repeats itself over disjointed snippets of samples, going nowhere ever so slowly. Brassy was never the most original of groups. But with Gettin Wise, they stumble towards futility. [Gettin Wise was also released with a bonus disc containing -- if this can possibly be believed -- even more versions of "Play Some D."]
© Johnny Loftus /TiVo