If you were to cut a love version of “Good Day” by Ice Cube, this would be it. “Goin Down” was another song that blasted endlessly from the speakers. You think you can take Face lyrically? On the title track, “The Diary”, he not only tells you how much you’ll fail, but how he’s going to assist you’re failure along the way. Brad Jordan dismiss the challenge offered to him at the intro to the song. On another similar song in structure but but spit over a much more uptempo beat, we hear Mr. I remember trying to sneak this song into the rotation during one of the school socials…needless to say that once he said “And now the funeral is over…” that shit was cut short. The tone of revenge over a gritty bassline and powered by dark lyrics helped this, at the time, A-typical style song. No hook, no cameos, no fancy singing, just straight spittin’. Face grabbed the mic, got as gangster as possible, and spit for almost 2 and a half minutes. “No Tears” was an instant classic with everyone I knew. These two songs are two of the more popular songs, but what else is on the album that affords it’s 5star rating. The video for the second single wasn’t very far behind in the rotation at all. The video for “I Seen A Man Die” was in heavy rotation there and if you’ve heard the song, there’s no questioning why. Now, I wasn’t crazy enough to call in and run up the phone bill, but I did watch. Now I don’t know if this was everywhere, but in STL we had a channel called The Box (Which later became MTV) and you could call in and request videos for a fee charged to your phonebill. Those 2 singles are “ I Seen A Man Die“ and “ Hand of the Dead Body“. With only 2 singles, this album rocketed to platinum status in 2 months. Scarface’s The Diary was given a perfect score by The Source and XXL and as much as we rib them for stuff they post, sometimes, there isn’t much to debate. I’m going to try and remedy that with an album that is certified classic by anyone who checks for music. I took a quick look through our Classic Material column and realized the south was grossly under-represented here.

Scarface the diary 1994