Steve 'Flash' JuonWho is Lee Bannon? Born Fred Welton Warmsley III, Bannon is a Sacramento music producer with a 15+ year history of lacing dope instrumentals for himself and others, with a habit of changing his nom de plume every so often to something like Dedekind Cut or Barrio Sur. The fact that two different Wikipedia pages can’t find any new entries for him since 2018 doesn’t tell me that he retired — that just tells me he changed handles again and they didn’t keep up. Anyway with “The Big Toy Box 2” we’re going back to a point when he was still using the Bannon name, from shortly before when he linked up with Joey Bada$$ and became Pro Era’s touring deejay for a while.
Even if you were unfamiliar with Bannon going into this album “Welcome Back” is a fitting title. A familiar sound from Gravediggaz’ “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide” is laced throughout the track and fits my ears like a knitted hat on a cold day. Honestly that can be said of most of Bannon’s choices even when something as obvious as RZA saying “let’s get it on ock” isn’t my cue. Despite the oddity of Babygrande Records uploading a “for press use only” copy of Bannon’s album as the official audio, tracks like “T.B.M.” still shine. That’s short for “The Best MAYN” if you couldn’t tell.
It can be hard on an instrumental album to grasp a producer’s personality, but Bannon gives away the game with “Sacramento Tempo” and lets who he is shine through. Bannon comes from a place where the yearly average temperature is between 70-75°F, and that warm sunny feeling infects his attitude and sound. Soul samples croon and invite you to nod your head to beat and the drums. The layered melody draws pleasant comparison to another California producer you know well. Even when he gives a track a purposefully provocative title like “Fuck You,” listening to it isn’t a hostile experience at all.
Although I’ve been complimentary up to this point there are two big things on “The Big Toy Box 2” that I can’t ignore. Babygrande’s weird choice to upload a watermarked record can be overlooked as a mistake, but the fact this album is FORTY-SIX TRACKS can’t be. By necessity this means that many of the songs are short instrumentals, and just when you get into a nice groove with Bannon’s beats the plug gets pulled and you jump to the next joint. “So Real” is so fresh, but it’s only 65 seconds long! I want to chop up a copy of it and make an extended cut for my own listening pleasure.
I’m not at all exaggerating about how disruptive this is. When the entire album clocks in at 73 minutes, which is just about the standard length of a compact disc (commonly accepted to be 74 but certain techniques can extend beyond it), you get a nagging feeling in the back of your head both the artist and the label tried to cram as much material as they could in at one time. For the late J Dilla I realize that he had more material than he had time to find emcees to rap over before his passing, so an album fleshed out with a lot of short ideas is aight. Bannon is at his prime here and has gone on to work with a substantial number of artists though so it’s almost puzzling to pump out this many sound snippets.
Sure “It’s Cool” and all, but do yourself a favor and find a copy of this without Babygrande Records trying so hard to prevent bootlegging that they bootlegged themselves, not to mention you won’t have to hear their “sword slicing” sound effect every minute or so. Neither of those things is Bannon’s fault, but I’m saying, YouTube is not the way you should listen to this album. They really ought to re-upload the whole thing to fix these issues. It’s a relatively obscure release so I doubt they ever will. In the meantime somebody let me know what handle Bannon is going by these days.