Steve 'Flash' JuonPosthumous albums are inherently weird. Saint Dog (real name Steven Thronson) passed away five years ago and here we are talking about his new album “Funky Soul.” He was just eight days shy of his 45th birthday when he passed, and for me that means if he were alive we’d only be a year apart in age. I suppose the fact we have the same first name and grew up with the golden era of rap just makes it all weirder. The plots diverge though when you consider he’s from Southern California and I’m from the rural Midwest. Thronson made his rap aspirations come true both as a founding member of the Kottonmouth Kings and as a soloist. I’m just writing about it while he actually did it. Respect Dog.
The title track with Chucky Chuck, The DRP & Obnoxious sees everybody reminiscing about their deceased comrade and giving him his props. From that point forward it’s a little harder to discern where and how the material for this album surfaced. Posthumous Biggie albums proved you can always recycle guest verses recorded on other people’s songs provided you have a new beat and new guest stars. Posthumous Tupac ones showed there’s always a certain amount of cutting room floor material that becomes more valuable than when it was originally recorded. I don’t think “Miss Demeanor” fits neatly into either category.
This song sounds eerily like a brand new Madchild track. Not vocally — Shane and Steven are completely different vocalists — but the production could fit either rapper to a tee. It’s got that kind of whimsical carnival carousel pipe noise that is both head nodding and a little bit spooky. It even reminds me of another late emcee — Hurricane G and her song “Underground Lockdown.” Props to Fiasco Andretti for coming up with something that fit Dog like a glove, whether this is from a scrapped prior recording or stitched together from an unheard archive of vocals. “Rock N Roll Gangsta” is equally slick and judging by Apple Music (the only credits I have to go on) Andretti did this one too.
You won’t be surprised to see his Kottonmouth Kings compatriots paying him respect either. D-Loc and Johnny Richter are both heard on “Loyalty Is Royalty” and I strongly suspect Saint Dog would be happy to reunite with them from beyond the grave. It would be news to me that there was beef, because much like the Wu-Tang Clan, everybody did solo projects but still worked with each other on them. Getting the “original lineup” of the Kings all in one place though was ironically much harder than getting Clan members back together, and with Saint’s passing more recent albums have only had D-Loc and nobody else. That’s another review for another day though.
If you listen to “Funky Soul” sequentially then “I Know” is a rather somber and sad note to end on. It sounds like Everlast playing the guitar and singing the blues, and not surprisingly given the acoustic nature it’s entirely self-produced. To this day I’ve never seen a coroner’s report on what happened to Dog, and if I’m being honest it’s not like I spent the last five years looking, because at the end of the day it’s not my business anyway. His friends and loved ones are the only people who need to know what happened for sure. The only detail I got was that paramedics found him unresponsive at a friend’s home and that was that. I’m not here to spit shine a plaque and attach it to his tombstone, but I did find Saint Dog to be a gruffly charming storyteller who worked well in a group and did fine as a soloist. Unlike some posthumous releases “Funky Soul” adds to the legacy of the deceased without doing any damage to his reputation, and his fans should enjoy one last trip together. I do mean “trip” literally too. I’ve been to a Kottonmouth Kings concert and the smoke is thicker than a Cuban cigar factory. Roll one up for Steven Thronson and smoke in his memory.