Steve 'Flash' Juon“It will take something spectacular to put Swifty McVay back on the map.” Grant Jones penned those words in 2017 when writing about McVay’s album “Grey Blood.” What about six years earlier though? At the time D12 was less than a decade removed from their biggest album “D12 World.” While their friend Marshall Mathers may have pushed his homies across the finish line, their larger than life personalities and boisterous rap styles ensures they’d stay in the spotlight… right? Not exactly. It seemed obvious that they would spin off successful solo albums the way Wu-Tang Clan did in the 1990’s, but when Eminem took a step back to let them succeed on their own, people just bitched and moaned that he wasn’t on their albums. It became an unwinnable scenario.
Swifty McVay’s “Helltotellthecaptin” may have unintentionally exacerbated the problem. Other D12 members had the sense to feature the group on their solo albums, but McVay decided to fly entirely solo on this 14 song album. Incidentally that title is accurate — no spacing and no capitalization, with “captain” purposefully misspelled. It’s one long run on sentence which reflects how you’ll feel listening to run on songs like “N Jail.” Swifty is trying to convince us how bad he is for no good reason. “A penitentiary magnet/I can kill a nigga without having a teardrop added.” I never doubted McVay’s credentials as a Detroit resident, but this humorless posturing over a banal beat actually makes me start to wonder.
Despite his past successes McVay seems relentlessly mad at everyone at everything here. “If You Knew Better” finds him railing that he “won’t let a woman manipulate me” which sounds like a recipe for loneliness to me; furthermore, “quit wearing a man’s jeans” is a hopelessly outdated bit of misogynistic posturing even for 2011. The purposeful misspellings can also be found in song titles like “Ant No Stoppin” — that’s “Ain’t” and not “ant” if you were wondering. He keeps talking about how he can’t be stopped because he has a wife and kids to feed. So? He’s not making the struggle interesting by rhyming “bold” with “old.” It’s incredibly basic.
No song personifies this album better than “Set 2 Aim.” Like almost every other track it finds Swifty McVay railing at enemies both real and imaginary, with his “keep this middle finger up/keep that fake shit over there” attitude on full display. Could this have worked? With a more interesting instrumental to rap over, it would have had a chance. With a more convincing aura as he delivered these bars, it would have at least had some presence. Someone like the late King Von would’ve had me buying it, but he’d also would’ve had better production to go with it, and he wouldn’t sound nearly so bored. Von attacked tracks, McVay just politely collaborates with them.
This album had me rethinking Swifty McVay as an artist on the whole and there’s no way that was his intention. In a large group like D12 he didn’t seem so unimpressive, but left to his own devices with no help he’s one rap trope after another. The back and forth bars with his comrades not only inspired a more energetic performance but led to hilarious memorable moments in songs and videos. You won’t find that here. Some people are not better off solo. If this had been a small D12 spinoff where he partnered with Kuniva or Bizarre some of that chemistry could be found, but there’s no fire burning anywhere on “Helltotellthecaptin” despite what the cover art will tell you.