By the end of 1961’s “The Hustler”, Fast Eddie Felsen has reached the phase Disco Vietnam and Zilla Rocca are in now. Falling in love with pool or rapping or making beats begins with hungrily learning the fundamentals. Most spend years finding the standard and meeting it. Once you arrive and leap over it you get to where Paul Newman’s
character is as the movie starts: the search for more power, the inescapable temptation to flex on people who can’t hang with you.

It causes fractures that unmoor you from what has defined you. The game. In his final form Fast Eddies obsession is with efficiency, the flash and flexing was in the way of perfecting what he is truly gifted at. This is the concision and strength of the fourteen songs you will listen to.

So many things are subjective and in that way, deniable(think of every smug high school art student breaking the news that the Mona Lisa isn’t that good a painting). Every time a great rapper tells me their focus is to say more with less words I think “Oh, like Zilla Rocca.” Pay attention to these verses and how they wander yet coordinate, somehow loose funny insightful, and spiritual. His hooks dig into your brain, they are weapons
formed for that mission.

Disco Vietnam understands and abides, not a moment out of place, not a second leaving you hungry to burst bigger. If you can’t sound good spitting over the “Fifties and Hundreds” beat then the good news is you get to listen to it, and listen to it served well. Fast Eddie lost so much, lost years of his life in an alcoholic stupor, lost loved ones with the lingering festering truth that he didn’t get enough time with them. I know everyone on this record has lost so much and dealt with it.

When you have something you’re great at, the game is a real place you can go. If you shoot 21 for 23 nobody can tell you shit. If you run the table all they can do is tap their pool sticks on the floor.