MOBB DEEP
Blood Money
Interscope
· "Hey, you got your Unit in my Mobb!" "No, you got your Mobb in my Unit!" "Ewww. You want it?" "Nope, it’s all yours."
Not much more than a cynical marketing gimmick to bridge the G generation gap, this stillborn effort sees the Queensbridge crew continuing to clutch at straws in an attempt to regain their bygone glory days by hitching their wagon to Fiddy’s clique for a shot at a younger demographic. Even the ignominious Infamy is easier to listen to than the hodge-podge of half-cooked ideas and halfhearted beats that make up the Mobb’s latest offering.
Although it may have looked good on paper, the album’s execution was more lethal injection than electric chair. Not only does it feel as if Fiddy and friends phoned in their parts, they’re way too late for either a reprieve or to stay the sentence. They don’t even muster up the strength to stage an escape attempt, seemingly content to leave the corpse laid out unceremoniously on the slab, cold and lifeless. Hell, there’s more heat in the TV dinner section of your supermarket’s freezer than there is on this somnambulistic gambit.
Saddest of all, almost no trace is left of the burning menace and coolly objective tale-spinning that made Havoc and Prodigy household names in hardcore rap. Gone are the warrior stories of the street life’s seamy underbelly and existentialist takes on the situational ethics of a thug. Instead, Prodigy struggles to come up with something more than couplets that make 2 Live Crew seem clever and complex by comparison, while Havoc spends his time just talkin’ loud and sayin’ nothin’. If anything, Blood Money ain’t a murder, it’s a funeral.
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