Pastor Troy is an angry man. He grunts, snarls, barks, and screams constantly, giving the distinct impression that he’s mad about something. But then again, you don’t name yourself Pastor Troy unless you’ve got something to be angry about, right? You’ve got to have something that you want to tell people. It’s a shame then that throughout the entirety of his latest Tool Muziq, it is remains unclear exactly what he’s so angry about.

Stemming from the Atlanta hip-hop scene, it’s pretty easy to imagine what Pastor Troy sounds like: shrill bells, machine-gun hi hats, and reams of paper thin keyboards carrying his hood-rich flows. But he falls so distinctly into this model that without top-notch lines and production, Tool Muziq sounds muddled and run-of-the-mill. He’s more like a David Banner redux than anything original.

Troy announces on the album opener, “I call it tool music, I’mma make them get they tools.” And it would seem that he’d start calling out emcees or his adversaries that he’s threatening to go to war with, but he never gets there. Instead, Troy opts for random references to his loaded arsenal and seemingly just shooting at things because he can.

But maybe he’s angry about the government and politics. The boldly named “Saddam” would lead you believe that he’s upset with the war in Iraq or possibly President Bush, but no such luck. In fact, the only reason Troy named the track as such is for the pseudo-intellectual rhyme, “Like Saddam, are you ready to bomb?” Just another faceless, aimless threat.

So he’s not mad at anyone in particular. He’s not mad about the social state. And Tool Muziq offers few, if any, clues beyond these as to why he’s so pissed.

Possibly the most painful part of Tool Muziq though are the choruses and ear-wrenching hooks. As if Troy took a page out of the “Hip Hop for Dummies” manual, nearly every hook is a two-line model similar to Young Jeezy’s set-up/punch-line combo. For example, “I got my AR-15 in my truck with me/ I don’t think y’all niggas wanna fuck with me, he cries on “In My Truck” and “Still looking at my car/ I ain’t even in it” on “Still Looking.”

Tool Muziq occasionally finds its Southern stride. On the unabashedly campy “I’m Fucked Up,” Troy refuses to go into a club, choosing to sit on his car and drink himself blind. The song is just self-aware enough that it becomes an enjoyable club hit rather than a painfully laughable exhibition in stupidity.

Maybe Troy just ran out of things to talk about on Tool Muziq. He’s been consistently in the game so long that he has lost a sense of himself and the things around him. If he hadn’t, he would’ve realized long ago that his vitriolic cries are much better suited following “featured” on the latest Petey Pablo single rather than making another album of his own.

by Chris Gaerig

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