As of lunchtime, this vintage YG music video has 5,366 views on YouTube, which is a waste and a shame of production considering that Snoop Dogg and Deebo make key appearances in the video's obviously superior second half. The song is a chore, however, and sounds rather like a post-Elephunk single from the Black Eyed Peas.
"Truth" is YG's upbeat consideration of the right and wrong paths that a kid can take in life, e.g., "Did I pass or fail?/Graduate or go to jail?" He gets briefly existential with it, wondering, "Who writes the test?/Who defines success?" As part of the soundtrack and promo for Mario Van Peebles' indie flop, We the Party, YG dropped "Truth" in 2012, and it's unfortunate that most of us had spared the song and its music video proper attention. Until now.
Here we find YG, who's an otherwise gifted narrator and tour guide, rapping in corny concert with a gospel choir and, for good measure, a leaden synth viola loop that you'd typically hear in an Air Force recruitment commercial or at a high school convocation. "Truth" opens with some pensive mandolin strumming, a truly cinematic touch.
Where the DIY graffiti spirit of B.E.P's "Where Is the Love?" music video is absolute farce—will.i.am and Justin Timberlake were good for a milli at that point in their respective careers—YG's "Truth" video is sincerely amateurish, with the production quality of a City Guys episode. And while you might guess that half of this footage was salvaged from Paul Haggis' regrettable Crash, that's YG, not Ludacris, ducking the law via mean back streets of a Los Angeles gallery lot.
1.
My ace compatriot Edwin Ortiz points out that YG dropped "Truth" two years after the success of "Toot It and Boot It," which perhaps indicates that "Truth," given how corny it is, was written under duress or due to otherwise obscured motivations. I ask: Was this song and its accompanying video the result of a court-ordered mandate, a la George Costanza's voice-over work in Let's Rap Fire Safety?
2.
"Listen up, brother, being truly educated ain't a part of their plan," YG raps, as if he were Ice Cube in '92. "We got tricked again and slicked again/Held back and not picked again," he continues, channeling Denzel Washington's Oscar-worthy (alas!) performance in Malcolm X.
File YG's "Truth" to the abundance of proof that conscious rap isn't dead, it's just shrouded critical disinterest and a flood of competing search results. Never mind that this anti-gang PSA is from the man who would eventually bless us with "Bicken Back Being Bool" and other blood grammar shenanigans on an album titled My Krazy Life.
Eazy-E set that precedent, of course.
