| Every holiday season the stores get flooded with best-of’s, reissues and box sets targeted to specific audiences, namely middle-aged consumers. The problem with this is that most current "stars" are marketed entirely to young people, leaving a bit of a void in the largest consumer segment in the industry. What to do?
Fortunately, someone came up with an answer – start flooding the market with utter shit hip hop. Hopefully none of this showed up under the tree or in your Chrismukkah package this year. If it did, well, your friends and family don’t like you very much.
First up is Dead Celebrity Status who inexplicably open their album Blood Music (Her Royal Majesty) with an intro in which a little girl tells a story about how music is being abused and sucked of all its quality. As if to contradict themselves immediately, the next track "We Fall, We Fall" is the type of rap-metal that predates Rage Against the Machine. The wannabe Massive Attack track "In This Day & Age" is particularly offensive, but the Eminem-isms rapped over one of the weakest guitar tones heard in a long time on "While I Was Asleep" is so bad that you might actually want to crack open the "new" Tupac album. Yes, just in time for the holidays, Tupac fires another missive from beyond the grave. Loyal To the Game (Interscope) is marginally notable because Tupac has become more prolific dead than many living artists will ever be.
Xzibit’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (Sony) continues to plumb the depths of thug rap, though he does try to get all up in the morals with tracks like "Saturday Night Live." The message is clear: the streets are hard, it’s tough to make it in this world and people shoot guns. Xzibit’s delivery is beginning to more resemble a wrestler spitting out lines than having much flow, while Busta Rhymes appearance on "Tough Guy" only confirms how far he’s fallen.
Ja Rule’s R.U.L.E. (The Inc) might win the award for most guest appearances on an album this year, including the radio-ready ballad "Wonderful" with R. Kelly and Ashanti. Considering his company in this column, Ja Rule isn’t offensively bad, just offensively mediocre.
Speaking of Ashanti, Concrete Rose (The Inc) is interesting for a couple of odd mixes of dark, big beats and her voice (as on "Only U" and the utterly wrong "Focus"), but "Don’t Let Them" is likely to be all over radio in the coming months. The album as a whole suffers not only from uninspired and confused production, but also a voice that can’t measure up to the benchmark that is Beyoncé.
Where Ja Rule gets noted for guest appearances, Cam’Ron gets noted for producers. On Purple Haze (Roc-a-fella) pulled in 14 producers over 23 tracks (including a mind-numbing five skits and an intro). This isn’t a terrible album – Kanye West drops beats on two tracks, the production throughout is pretty funky (although I’m not sure how I feel about the Hill Street Blues theme being sampled on "Harlem Streets"), but Cam’Ron’s lyrics need work. Also, the pictures of him in a furry purple hat and jacket make him look gayer than real gay people.
Probably the biggest release of this bunch is Ludicris’s return to the record shelves with The Red Light District (Def Jam), and he’s still boasting, doping and telling us not to mess with him. The Timbaland-produced tracks stand out head and shoulders above the rest, but Ludicris is mildly entertaining for the first half before his act gets tired. |
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