Todd “Too Short” Shaw is just as important to Oakland culture as the Golden State Warriors and the Oakland Raiders. I know that both teams have relocated from Oakland, but just like Short who left Oakland for Atlanta in the nineties, all three entities remain deeply ingrained in Oakland’s soil and consciousness even in their absence. Too Short’s admiration isn’t limited to Oakland, though. His respect in the game stretches from coast to coast and all points in between. He’s collaborated with most of your favorite rappers, including Ice Cube, Snoop, Scarface, Biggie, Jay-Z. Hell, he even made the Midnight Marauders album cover (Tribe Degrees of Separation: check). That kind of respect doesn’t come overnight, as the saying goes: you have to earn respect. Short’s been earning his respect, dating back to the eighties, which is the same decade he released the subject of today’s post, Life Is…Too Short.

Life Is…Too Short is the second album Too Short released after signing with Jive Records and would mark the beginning of his incredible six consecutive platinum selling album stretch. Produced entirely by Too Short with help from R. Austin, T. Bohanon, and Al Eaton, Life Is would climb to number thirty-seven on the US Billboard 200. It would also reach the two million units sold mark, and sixteen albums and thirty-five years later, it’s still Short’s best-selling album to date. In 2022, Rolling Stone placed Life Is at 186 on their list of the 200 Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time.

Life Is comes with some pretty gaudy stats, but here at TimeIsIllmatic, we’re more concerned with quality and the music’s ability to stand the test of time. So, without further ado, let me do what I do.

Life Is… Too Short – There’s nothing like opening an album with the title track, which in this case was also the album’s lead single. Our host could have gone super narcissistic with the title and rapped about the world revolving around him. Instead, he builds around the original cliché saying, discussing the value of life, those who despise it, waste it, take it for granted, and cherish it. Short also talks about the motivating factor in his own life: money. As usual, Sir Too Short drops a few jewels off along the way and sounds right at home rhyming over the rubbery funk groove, built around a couple of loops from Average White Band’s “School Boy Crush.” This record still goes hard.

Rhymes – Todd follows up the infectious funk groove on the previous track with arguably the barest and most basic drumbeat ever heard by the human ear. He raps for four-plus minutes with no breaks or hooks and manages to get off a few clever bars, but his monotone voice and fundamental flow don’t sound flattering over the scarce beat.

I Ain’t Trippin’ – Our host transforms into “Sleepy Short” for this track as he shares some of his musical bio and brushes off his haters and naysayers, while rapping in a whisper of a voice that sounds like he just woke up: “Benzes roll, Beamers jet, and Caddies keep on dippin’, you keep talkin’ all that crap…and I ain’t trippin’.” Sleepy Short does a serviceable job on the mic, but the darkly tinted bouncy bass line (that reminds me of the bass line from his future classic, “Blow The Whistle”) is the true star of the track. Side note: Fellow Oakland native and comedian, Mark “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper” Curry plays one of Short’s haters in the music video, spewing comical hate and rumors in between Short’s verses of the single/radio mix.

Nobody Does It Better – Short and company chef up a slow-rolling backdrop built around Tinker Bell drums and a suffocated vibrating bass line. Our host uses it to continue to talk his shit as he boasts, calls out a few of his West Coast contemporaries for using “New York slang” (he doesn’t give names, which left me wonder who he could be referring to in 1988), and gives a brief and very random PSA about smoking dope, square in the middle of the song. The instrumental feels underdeveloped, making it really easy to lose interest in Short’s flat vocal tone.

Oakland – Sleepy Short makes his return for this ode to his hometown. Maybe Seductive Short is a better description, as our host puts on his bedroom voice to recite a repetitive spoken word love poem to the Bay area city he represents. Short gets a little assistance from an adlibbing talk box voice and a few uncredited ladies who sensually chant “Oakland” and “Oaktown” during the hook, making Oakland sound like the sexiest city in the world. The sparkling, pristine backdrop makes things sound even more appealing.

Don’t Fight The Feelin’ – During “Nobody Does It Better,” Too Short raps “I know you wanna hear my triple X, foul language, girls and sex.” This song provides that portion of his fanbase exactly what they paid admission for. Short & Co. loop up One Way’s record of the same name, creating a thick infectious funk groove as our host transforms into Playboy Short and gets deep into his misogyny bag. Throughout his three verses, our vertically challenged host shoots aggressively direct shots at a few females in his scope. His targets (Entice and Barbie of The Danger Zone, who remind me of the rapping twins from Coming To America (“My name is Peaches and I’m the best, all the deejays want to feel my breast”)) shoot down his attempts and clap back, making several references to his alias being related his dick size and not being adequate enough to please them. The cruelest diss of the whole record comes when Entice and Barbie suggest that Short’s mom should have killed him at birth (their exact words are “Your mother should have hung you from her umbilical cord”). Rappin’ 4 Tay randomly drops in to add a verse and share his two cents in this explicit battle of the sexes, turning an already long affair into an eight-minute and change affair, but an entertaining one.

CussWords – Too Short follows up the previous eight-minute raunch fest with another nearly eight-minute track. Like “Rhymes,” Short disregards a hook and spends seven minutes and forty-five seconds spewing all kinds of randomness, including a shot at Ronald Reagan, claims that Nancy Reagan gave him head (along with some random chicks named Helen and Betty), a plethora of bitches, hoes, and pimp references, and a few bars aimed at wack emcees. He also gets off what might be one of my favorite Too Short rhymes: “People out here droppin’ dead like flies, I used to see a homeboy, give him five, now I say, “Man, you still alive?” And I laugh every time I listen to his song-ending tirade, where he lets off a couple of wicked combination of curses. Despite the generic instrumental, I enjoyed Short’s simple but entertaining rhymes.

City Of Dope – On “Oakland,” Too Short paid homage to his hometown, framing it in a glimmering desirable light. This record shows the dark side of Oaktown, as Todd addresses the crack epidemic that rattled his city like it did most large urban areas in the eighties. Short’s bleak content is backed by a deep semi-twangy funk groove that sounds custom-made for Short’s straightforward flow and is just as addictive as the dope he raps about.

Pimp The Ho – Short adapts an uncharacteristically aggressive tone for this one as he and the team loop up a few sexy Cameo guitar loops for our host to go for the jugular of wack emcees and put the strong pimp hand down on his bitches.

Hidden Track – The album ends with this hidden outro, which is nothing more than a promo to get the listener to go buy Too Short’s 1987 Jive Records debut, Born To Mack. Short brings back the drums from “Life Is… Too Short” and a couple of his vocal snippets (one saying “Too Short,” the other “I was born to mack”) are scratched into the record. There is absolutely no reason to listen to this track more than once. And why do the drums sound so damn janky?

The 1989 reissue of Life Is… Too Short (which I also own a copy of) removed “Don’t Fight The Feelin’,” “CussWords,” and the “Hidden Track” and added the following two songs:

Mack Attack – Short Dog recaptures a portion of the energy he flowed with on “Pimp The Ho,” as the mack goes on the attack, rapping his ass off and lyrically slapping up all hoes and foes in his path without dropping one curse. The instrumental is decent (the bass line sounds very similar to the one used on “I Ain’t Trippin’), but Short easily outshines the music. This is probably Short’s best lyrical performance of the album. Too bad it wasn’t included on the original pressing of Life Is.

Alias Crazy Rak – Too Short graciously gives his deejay Crazy Rak a chance to shine dolo. And what does he do with the opportunity? He places pedestrian cuts over a simple drumbeat, resulting in a simply boring record.

I’m sure there’s a segment of the hip-hop population that aren’t Too Short fans, and I can understand why. The misogyny that’s often associated with his name may deter some ladies from listening to his music. His rudimentary flow and non-complex rhyme schemes might not be the cup of tea that satisfies the taste buds of some. Then there’s his deadpan delivery that could easily be perceived as monotonous. But like Short says during “Mack Attack”: “When it’s Too Short baby, ain’t nothin’ plain.” Using his “ordinary” skills to make entertaining music has been Short’s magical superpower throughout his career, and some of that magic shows up on Life Is…Too Short.

The album cover for Life Is shows Too Short perched behind John “Sucka MC” Doe’s tombstone (it also hi-lariously reads: “BORN: ON STAGE DIED: ON WAX”), which is fitting as Short spends half the album spewing boasts and battle raps. The other half of the album focuses on social commentary and, of course, the Prime Minister of Misogyny gets into his ministry for a few joints. Too Short’s bars are backed by a bed of head bobbin’ stank face-inducing funk grooves, which is the secret weapon that has made Short’s music so enduring through the years. With two of the album’s ten tracks coming in at eight minutes, and three more reaching the six-minute mark, our host definitely didn’t get his alias due to the length of his tracks. Still, at just under fifty-five minutes, the album feels like the perfect runtime, not too long or…too short. *rimshot*

There are a few dry moments on Life Is, but overall, it’s a solid album from one of hip-hop’s most beloved rappers. Beeatch! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

-Deedub

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