Remember Fonzworth Bentley? No? Way back at the turn of the century he was employed as Diddy's personal assistant which seemingly involved a lot of wielding fancy umbrellas, wearing knee-high tweed knickers, riding unicycles, growing handle bar mustaches and doing similar such old timey activities. Well, proving the theory that everything in existence will eventually end up on the internet, today Bentley quietly drops his long awaited (by someone) rap full length C.O.L.O.U.R.S. on his Mr. Bentley website (in case you had mistook him for one of those imposter Fonzworth Bentleys). Presumably this material was recorded for Kanye's G.O.O.D. imprint around 2007 and then scrapped a few years later as Yeezy unceremoniously dropped his entire roster in favor of flying just half of the Clipse to Abu Dhabi.
And for an eternally shelved cash-in project from rap's most useless umbrella carrier C.O.L.O.U.R.S. surprisingly proves to be a pretty solid effort, sometimes even better than solid. Bentley isn't a great rapper by any stretch of the imagination but he's also far from a bad one, wisely sticking to his comfort zone of borrowing/biting heavily from his old school homie Andre 3000 (who appears alongside Kanye on the would-be lead single "Everybody") and letting himself sink into the so futuristic production. At the time the record was rumored to be produced primarily by Sa-Ra and while no credits are included much of this sounds like it could be their handiwork). And sure there are a few songs on there that sound exactly like what one would expect a vanity song by an bow tied manservant to sound like but they are few and far between. Plus it features guest shots from too-often forgotten Dungeon Family second stringers Slimm Cutta Calhoun, Backbone and Cool Breeze and (finally!) a NODJ version of the syrupy title cut, which now adds a Bun B sixteen to the Pimp C and Lil Wayne verses.
Stream the whole tape or individual tracks from his website or else try and deal with Bentley's beyond confusing mix-and-match download system that involves both iTunes purchases and freebee download wishes that are granted in exchange for a valid email address.
