What's going on people?! This salute post goes to an album that was considered one of this particular legend's most intimate and moody releases. This album expounded on his prior southern landmark album, The Diary, and continued its vision. By the time this album dropped in '97, his stature was approaching giant status within not just the south but in all of hip-hop. His brand of macabre, yet vulnerable and at times spiritual hip-hop made him a household, and at the time of two icons of Pac and Biggie tragically passing, the importance of this artist was raised that much more. The result was an exceptional album that further branded this cat as the official (and original) king of the south. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a salute to Scarface's The Untouchable.
We were already captivated by the artist known as Scarface of seminal group, The Geto Boys. Responsible for two of the absolute hardest hip-hop albums to ever get released in Grip It! On That Other Level and We Can't Be Stopped, they all began going on solo ventures. While people were checking for Bushwick Bill and Willie D, the real star of the crew was Brad Jordan, otherwise known as Scarface. His debut album, Mr. Scarface Is Back, is widely considered one of the grittiest and realest albums of all-time. Vivid, uncompromising, and relentless, the album explored nihilism, madness, and self-destruction and it became a brutal, yet awe-inspiring classic for the game. He followed it up with a decent follow-up in The World Is Yours, but it was his third album that we all officially paid attention to Face on a bigger level.
In '94, he dropped The Diary, which became a southern staple and was eventually unofficially given the claim of "greatest album to come from the south". Mixing agression with a building sense of reflection and spirituality, The Diary marked a new level with Face. Hoping to continue to overwhelming acclaim of The Diary, he delivered The Untouchable, a fourteen-track dynamite effort that showed that the artist known as Scarface was among the most revered emcees in the entire game. Starting off brooding and dark, cuts like "Ya Money Or Ya Life" and "No Warning" were classic Face, with threats of utter violence and the reassurance of reminding people just who he was. While fairly consistent, a bump in the road or two like "Money Makes The World Go Round" or "Smartz" would temporarily knock the album off a touch with plain production and uninspired lyrics, but then cuts like the eerie "Faith", the haunting ode to weed "Mary Jane" (former Murder Inc princess Ashanti used this song to sample for her hit single "Baby"), and the menacing "Game Over" featuring three icons in themselves Dr. Dre, Too $hort, and Ice Cube (Cube worked with him on The Diary's tremendous cut "Hand of the Dead Body") would more than make up for any stumble.
However, the cut that gave the album its official mainstream buzz was the ominous, yet touching, duet with the late 2Pac, "Smile". The video depicted a 2Pac look-a-like draped on a cross in the midst of a flooding storm. The cut (you know a cut is strong when gospel megastar Kirk Franklin redid it for his own hit "Smile") became his biggest selling single to date, going gold.
He would end up releasing other excellent efforts such as Made, Last of a Dying Breed, and simply stellar works like the 2002 classic The Fix and 2015's Deeply Rooted. With The Untouchable, Face kept his seat as the king of the south, as the album further cemented the importance of one of the truest emcees and most vivid storytellers in the game. Twenty years later, we still celebrate this album as one of his finest overall moments and we salute The Untouchable.
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